^ ^' * ^^ ^ 




Author 



Title 



Imprint. 



16— 47J7J-2 OPO 



EDUCATION 

AND AUTOCRACY 

IN RUSSIA 

FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE 
BOLSHEVIKI 







DANIEL BELL LEARY 

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the 

degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Teachers 

College, Columbia University 

Summer 1919 



UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO 

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 

BUFFALO, NEW YORK 

1919 



Education and Autocracy 

in Russia 

From the Origins to the Bolsheviki 



DANIEL BELL LEARY 

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the 

degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Teachers 

College, Columbia University, 

Summer 1919 



UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO 
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
BUFFALO, NEW YORK 

1919 






COPYRIGHT, 1919 

BY THE 

UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO 



Qift 

^Diversity 
^^^ ".'^ 1919 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. Introduction : 

Explanation of Thesis 9 

Relation of Education to National Life and 

Character 11 

11. The Period Before Peter: 9th-17th Centuries: 

The Rise and Development of Early Democracies 13 

The Coming of the Tatars 18 

The Rise of Moscow and the Autocracy 20 

Recapitulation, Economic Conditions and Edu- 

tion 24 

III. Peter to Catherine II. 1689-1725-1762: 

The Problems and the Reforms of Peter. ....... 30 

The Educational Reforms and Creations of Peter 32 

Peter's Successors, to Catherine II 34 

IV. Catherine II to Alexander I. 1762-1801 : 

The Policies and Activities of Catherine 38 

Educational Reforms and Growth to 1801 40 

V. Alexander I. 1801-1825 : 

Political and Economic Adjustments under Alex- 
ander 45 

Social Unrest and Secret Societies 47 

Educational Construction and Reaction 49 

VI. Nicholas I. 1825-1855: 

Autocracy as a Principle; and the Results 57 

Autocracy and Society 60 

Autocracy, and Education as "Discipline" 62 

VII. Alexander II. 1855-1881 : 

The Great Reforms and Subsequent Reaction. . . 67 

Growth of Organized Social Thought and Action 70 

Education, Society, and Alexander 73 

5 



TABLE OF CONTENTS-Continued 

VIII. Alexander III. 1881-1894: 

The Beginning of the Great Reaction 82 

The Broadening Social Movement 85 

The Effects in Education 87 

IX. NiCH0L.\s II. 1894-1917: 

The Continuance of the Great Reaction 92 

The Growth of Opposition : Zemstvos and Revo- 
lutionists 94 

The Revohition of 1905 98 

The Last Phase of Autocratic Education 100 

X. The Transition to the Bolsheviki : 

The Two Revokitions 108 

The Educational Philosophy of the Bolsheviki.. 112 

Appendix : Statistics 1 18-123 

Bibliographies : Russian and English 124-127 



PREFACE 

In view of present social and political conditions, pointing to the 
beginning of the. growth of a closer relationship between the old 
world and the new, it becomes more imperative than ever that 
mutual understanding and knowledge be the basis of the new rela- 
tionship. The history of Russian education, from an interpretative 
point of view, has scarcely been begun, even in Russia, though the 
materials for it have been collected. It is intended that this first 
survey shall be followed by other investigations giving, for the 
various periods, a more detailed account than has been possible in 
this broader analysis. 

I am glad to express my appreciation for the aid and encourage- 
ment which have been given me. Professors Monroe, Kilpatrick 
and Kandel of Teachers' College have been particularly kind, while 
to Professor Prince of the Russian Department of Columbia Univer- 
sity I owe my first introduction, some five years ago, to the language 
and the affairs of Russia. 

I am also under obligation to my many Russian friends who, 
however much they have differed in political and social creeds have, 
one and all, exemplified a spirit of service in giving many hours of 
their time to a foreigner who had no other claim than a sincere and 
friendly interest in their land and language. 

D. B. L. 
July 29, 1919. 



CHAPTER I 
Introduction 



Explanation of Thesis. 



This essay will endeavor to trace the following four movements 
in the history of Russia, and to show their mutual relationships : 
1, the growth of democracies in the period from the 9th to the 13th 
centuries ; 2, the evolution of an autocracy, dating from the 13th 
century ; 3, the creation and imposition by this autocracy of a system 
of education directed to class and politician ends ; 4, the resultant 
struggle against this autocracy and its system of education. 

Finally, an examination will be made of the program of the 
Bolshevik regime as a type of education radically different, in prin- 
ciple and method, from that which it has, for the time being, sup- 
planted, and which claims to be of and for that people whom the 
previous system neglected. 

In other words, an attempt will be made to correlate the social, 
economic, political and educational evolutions of Russia. It seems, 
to the writer, that it is easy to trace, in Russia, a clear connection 
between these different factors of history. Political and economic 
disaster or dissatisfaction have led to social and educational advance- 
ment, newly established security at home and abroad, after a period 
of disorder, have often led to new social and educational restric- 
tions. The influence of the West is predominant throughout — now 
leading to reform, again to insular attempts to be self-sufficient; 
but it cannot be too much insisted that Russian history is a part of 
that larger field of history represented by Western civilization in 
general. 

The history of education in Russia affords an example of this 
influence of the West. Under Peter, and even to some extent under 
some of his immediate predecessors, Russia was literally forced to 
share in the culture of the West and to think some of her ideas ; 
under some of the later Tsars it was forbidden even to travel abroad. 
But in every case, under the Romanov dynasty, the principles of 
Russian ediication have been formed by and for the sake of the 
ruling class and the government. 



Education has always been considered in Russia, by both the 
autocracy and its opponents, as an eminently serious and important 
matter. Russian literature, all but the very lightest, has concerned 
itself with the question. Education and schools are viewed, and 
have always been viewed, in intimate connection with life, but the 
kinds of life for which the reformers and the government wished 
the schools to prepare were, of necessity, totally different. It was 
the inability of the government either to stem the tide of the revolu- 
tionary movement, or to bring about, under its own direction, the 
necessary and widely demanded educational and social reforms 
which led to the present state of affairs. But it must be kept con- 
stantly in mind that the social' revolution, of which the Soviet govern- 
ment is the culmination, began in a very real sense with Peter the 
Great. The present is only the historical outcome of a long and 
intricate struggle between the Russian people and their government 
which, ready more than once to fall, needed but the final and too 
disintegrating conditions of the World War to bring it to an end. 
But the beginning was long ago. 

In addition to establishing the main points of the first para- 
graph, it is hoped that this essay may help to a better understanding 
of Russia and things Russian. The rest of Europe and, in par- 
ticular, the people of the United States have not known or under- 
stood much of Russia and her history in the past; if we had, there 
might have been less surprise at the Revolution and more prepara- 
tion for it. For better or for worse, we of America are, since 
the war, more closely knit to Europe and its problems, and Russia 
is a large part of Europe, both from the point of view of resources 
and size, as well as of population. Her problems are our problems, 
even if not so acute ; and her solutions, whether failures or suc- 
cesses, should be followed closely and accurately, and as they really 
are, not as interested propaganda too often misrepresents them. 
Autocratic Russia, like Germany, had a highly centralized national 
system of education, with very definite national ideals, and a highly 
specialized conception of mass and class, — and it has all come to 
nothing. We, of the United States, are also a nation ; we, too, have 
problems not unlike Russia's, and it is not stretching possibilities 
to expect that we can perhaps gain in educational outlook by un- 
derstanding conditions and solutions in both the old and the new 
Russia. In any case, we can help her. American educational ideas 
and ideals are well known in Russia, many of them most favorably ; 
American text-books are highly thought of ; but we cannot offer 
adequate or substantial advice without an intimate knowledge of 
her past and present conditions. 

10 



With this in mind, there have been included, together with the 
Russian references, authorities in translation. Many authoritative 
presentations of Russian thought exist in Western European lan- 
guages, though for a thorough investigation, at least at present, 
acquaintance with the Russian language is necessary. This fact 
comes out clearly in the case of Russian literature which, to us of 
the West means, only too often, merely the names and the novels 
of some few^ w^riters, representing one or more aspects of the spirit 
of the country, but no more representative of the whole than, say, 
Dickens and Wells would be with us. Educated Russians know 
the United States better than we know Russia, — and largely be- 
cause they have taken the trouble to learn English. 

Relation of Education to National Life and Character. 

What should be the relation of education to national life and 
character? Several answers can and have been given to this ques- 
tion ; Russia, under the old government, answered by attempting 
to mobilize and organize national life and character in terms of 
ideals originating in, and in favor of a ruling class. But since these 
ideals were not at all in accord with the real nature of the people 
or their ideals, they had to be constantly bolstered up by force of 
one kind or another. We shall therefore find force as an ever 
present factor in Russian education. We shall also find that great 
emphasis has been placed on the so-called "church subjects" and 
much time devoted to them, puarticularly in the elementary schools, 
beyond which the great mass of the people did not progress. 

As a general background for the criticism and evaluation of 
Russian education, as it was under the autocracy, the following 
democratic principles of the relation of education to life and char- 
acter are assumed as valid. First, education is a process whereby 
the individuals of each generation come to understand and to par- 
take of the traditions and the culture of the group and its history, 
not merely for the sake of understanding these traditions or in order 
to become subject to them under the domination of a ruling class, 
but for the sake of thereby becoming unified with the society in 
which they, as individuals, live and in which they are to be active. 
Secondly, this activity of the individual should be in terms of the 
life and activity of the group as a whole, so that the democratically 
educated individual, in a very real sense, acts for the welfare of 
the group and finds therein his own. This carries with it several 
corollaries, conspicuously neglected by the older Russian education. 
In the first place it means control of the individual by his own ideas 

11 



and purposes, socially derived, to be sure, but not by coercion from 
above; secondly, it means free intercourse of each and every sec- 
tion of the whole group ; thirdly, it means progressive adjustment 
and re-adjustment in terms of both the experiences of the individual 
and the group ; fourthly, it means adaptation of education to local 
needs and posssibilities, in place of a stereotyped abstract idea of 
"education as such", used to transform all participants to a given 
type, with the exception of the chosen few who have devised the 
conception. Finally, it means the same education, so far as the 
individual can profit by it, for each and all, not a stratified system 
of mutually exclusive schools for dififerent social and economic 
groups. 

With the above as a background the course of development of 
education in Russia will be followed from its origins, through the 
period of the control of the Autocracy, up to the present regime, 
together with the accompanying social, political and economic fac- 
tors of each period, in so far as they seem to interact with the edu- 
cational situation. 



12 



CHAPTER II. 
The Period Before Peter 

The Rise and Development of the Early Democracies. 

"The history of Russian education in its organized form can 
scarcely be said to date back to a period anterior to the time oi 
Peter the Great." (DarHngton, Chap. I.) The only schools in 
existence were those attached to monasteries, and were both few 
in number and very degenerate. (Demkov). It is necessary, how- 
ever, before entering upon an examination of the efiforts of Peter 
to supply a system of schools to his country, to examine the nature 
of the civilization and culture which prevailed before his time. 
This will involve a brief survey of the history of the period of 
Russian history extending from the origins to the end of the 17th 
century, — a period of some 900 years. 

"The history of Russia affords special facilities for the study 
of sociology. They originate, firstly, in the comparative simplicity 
of the processes dominant throughout its course — a simplicity which 
enables us to examine minutely, not only the workings of the his- 
torical forces in general, but also the operation and relative potency 
of those special factors by which the comparatively non-complex 
composition of Russian social life has been determined; and sec- 
ondly, in the peculiar circumstances which have influenced Russian 
development from the very beginning — circumstances which, while 
imparting to the nation a distinctive character and genius, have 
communicated also to the national life a special rate of evolutionary 
progress." (Kluchevsky, vol. I, p. 1.) 

In the course of those migrations in Europe which, at different 
times resulted in the occupation of Greece, Rome and the center 
and West of Europe, one of the later was that of the "Slavs." They 
were known, apparently, to the Greek and Roman writers as 
"Scythians," and before separation into groups dwelt in the forests 
and plains beyond and north of the Carpathian mountains. This 
Carpathian period lasted from approximately the 2nd to the 7th 
centuries, when the pressure of the Avars forced the Slavs to mi- 
grate still further. (Kovalevsky, 101, chap. I.) In their migra- 
tions it was the Carpathian mountains which separated the group 

13 



as a whole into the Western and Eastern divisions, known to us 
now, respectively, as the Bohemian-Serb group and the Russians. 
These latter occupied, at first, but a very small part of modern 
Russia in Europe, being barred from the North and the Baltic by 
Finns and Lithuanians, and from the South and the Black Sea by 
Turkish and Finnish tribes. Thus the middle portion of modern 
Russia was their first habitat. This brings us to approximately 
860 A. D., the time of the English King Alfred, and shows the 
comparative lateness of development and organization. (Kluchevsky, 
vol. I, chap, v.; Kovalevsky, 101, chap. I. For maps, see Beazlev, 
and Milioukov, 103.) 

From the time of this early settlement to the- coming of the 
Tatars, that is, from the 9th to the 13th centuries, the history of 
Russia is a history of democratic and republican ideas and institu- 
tions, to a very marked degree. These ideas and institutions they 
brought with them. Procopius and Maurikius, annalists of the 6th 
and 7th centuries, at Byzantium, comment on this. "From the re- 
motest period," says Procopius, "the Slavs were known to live in 
democracies ; they discussed their wants in popular assemblies or 
folkmotes." (Ex Gothica seu Bellum Gothicum, chap. XIV, quoted 
by Kovalevsky, 101, p. 6.) "The Slavs like liberty," writes the 
Emperor Maurikius, "they cannot bear unlimited rulers, and are 
not easily brought to submission." (Stategicum, chap. 11, quoted by 
Kovalevsky, 101, p. 6.) "The Slavs," says the Emperor Leo, "are 
a free people, strongly opposed to any subjecftion." (Tactica seu de 
Militari, chap. XVIII, quoted by Kovalevsky, 101, p. 6.) 

Among the privileges of the folkmotes was that of choosing 
a ruler, and it was in connection with this right that a beginning 
was made in the organization of the land and the people. In the 
Chronicle of Nestor (Beazley, pp. 4, 5), we read, "... and they 
set themselves to govern themselves, and there was no more justice 
among them : families disputed with families, and there were dis- 
cords, and they made war between themselves. Then they said, 
Let us seek for a Prince to rule over us and judge us according 
to right. And they went over the sea of the Varangians and went 
among the Rus, . . . and said to the Rus, Our land is rich and great, 
but there is no order among us ; come then, and rule and govern 
us. And three brothers joined together, with their families and 
brought them to Rus. ..." This is perhaps the first mention of 
the word we know as "Russia," which is said to be a Finnish term 
for the Norsemen, describing them as "rowers." This domination 
lasted only two years when rebellion broke out, the people of the 

14 



town of Novgorod saying, "We are but slaves, and suffer evil from 
Rurik and his nobles." But the revolt was broken, and, "At the 
end of two years, died Sineus and Truvor, and Rurik made himself 
master of all the countrv, . . . He established himself there (Nov- 
gorod), as Prince, and divided among his companions the lands 
and the towns . . ." (Beazley, ibid.) 

Thus the first nucleus of consolidation in Russia is in the North, 
— Novgorod (New Town). But the Rus, under their "Viking" 
leaders, expanded to the South and began to place under the sway of 
the Princes of Novgorod the rest of the towns of the land. Pioneers, 
also of Norse stock, had preceded the Princes of Novgorod, and 
had even attacked Tsargrad, i. e. Constantinople, about 865. Here 
again, the source is Nestor. (Beazley). The Patriarch Photius of 
the Eastern Empire, is also witness to this. (Kluchevsky, vol. I, 
pp. 70-72). . 

Kiev was the most important of the towns thus brought under 
sway of the Norse rulers, and became, in turn, the center for fresh 
invasions and conquests, as well as the new capital of the Norse- 
Slavic culture and the chief market for the trade with the East, 
which was always associated with the conquests of the advancing 
Princes. There was, as yet, no trade with the Poles or Hungarians, 
and that with the North homeland was comparatively insignificant. 

With the rise of Kiev, the second of the early famous towns, 
a much broader political development began. As the Princes of 
this town extended their domains, thev also established, as rulers 
of the conquered territory, relatives or paid retainers, but under 
such terms that, apart from the paying of tribute, they were as 
complete in their sovereignty as the Grand Prince of Kiev. There 
was really a confederation of "city states," _ with a President at 
Kiev. During the winter, from November to April, the Grand 
Prince made a tour of his domains to collect tribute, seldom, at 
this period, in money. In the Spring preparations were made for 
the Summer trade and, in June, a great fleet sailed and floated down 
the Dnieper to the Black Sea and thence to the Byzantine ports. 
From thence, by the Sea of Azov, the Don and the Volga the trade 
was carried to the markets of Eastern Islam. The retinue of the 
Grand Prince was composed of the nobles who were at once the 
ruling and the merchant class and were accompanied by some 
private traders. But the bulk of the commerce was, so to speak, 
ofificial. Treaties were made and broken with the Eastern Empire, 
involving tax agreements, fines, modus operandi of trading, and 
so on. (Beazley, pp. 10-17.) In all this two things are of import- 

15 



ance for tlie future development of Russia; first, intercourse with 
Byzantium led ultimately to the conversion of the Russians by the 
Eastern Church ; secondly, Roman legal conceptions crept into the 
country, among which the conception of absolutism in ruling, when 
reinforced by the experiences of the Tatar invasion, led to a com- 
plete revolution of the system of government. (Kluchevsky, vol. I, 
chaps. VI, VII, XII.) 

The regent Olga, of Kiev, marks the beginning of state interest 
in Christianity. In 955 she went on a state visit to Constantinople 
and was baptized by Constantine VII and the Patriarch of the 
Church, assuming the new name of Helene. ( Chronicle, in Beazley, 
p. 20.) But it is not until the reign of her grandson, St. Vladimir, 
that Christianity is officially adopted. 

At first a valiant restorer of the old heathendom and defender 
of the old gods, he came, in later life, both to feel a certain religious 
unrest among his people and also to become acquainted with other 
religions. According to the Chronicle, he and his council examined 
in turn the Jewish, the Mohammedan and the various forms of the 
Christian faith, coming finally to the conclusion that, of them all, 
the one most fitted to the nature of the Rus, as well as the most 
beautiful and the most appealing, and also the one favored by his 
grandmother Olga, was the Eastern form of Christianity. It is 
noteworthy that the form of the Eastern service appealed to him 
and his followers, — "For there is no such spectacle on earth, nor 
one of such beawty. We cannot describe it : we only know that 
there God dwells in the midst of men." (Beazley, pp. 21-24.) 
Vladimir married the sister of Basil II and baptized his people by 
force, in droves in the river, throwing the old gods over a blufif into 
the stream. 

Thus was a momentous decision made and carried out, and 
its basic cause was trade and the location of trade routes. It is 
more important than it seems at first sight, for choice of the East- 
ern Church meant refusal of the claims of the Church of Rome, 
meant cultural separation from the civilization of the West and from 
the Romanized Polish Slavs, with momentous consequences in wars 
and intrigues. It also meant, on the other hand, alliance with a 
decaying civilization while Russia was herself too young to judge 
its faults. It is this early union with the East which is the source, 
in later days, of prejudice against the West and its culture, making 
the task of Peter and his successors more difficult, and giving rise 
to political and social problems. 

16 



Under Vladimir, early Russia attained its highest power, its 
greatest expansion and least defective organization, though it did 
not become a thoroughly unified state. Under his son Yaroslav, 
the reputed author of the "Russkaya Pravda" or Code of Russian 
Law, many and brilliant alliances were made with the reigning fami- 
lies of other lands, — Poland, Norway, France and Hungary. Under 
his rule Kiev is said to have rivalled Constantinople in grandeur, 
but to maintain it heavy taxes, paid by the peasantry, were neces- 
sary. The peasants, to be sure, had not yet lost their ancient heri- 
tage of freedom and democracy, but the process was beginning. 
(Kluchevsky, vol. I, chaps. VI, IX, X.) 

The death of Yaroslav showed clearly that only a strong hand 
had held the Federation together. The next two hundred years 
are years of internal discord and war, and the hope that Kiev with 
its Duma might have developed into a true well founded democracy 
is lost and, to the coming of the Tatars, there is no further suprem- 
acy there. Novgorod takes up the leadership.. ^ 

Russian official historians like to point to the fact of the 
autocracy as proof that it was inherent in the nature of the Rus- 
sian people. Kiev, at its height, is disproof of this, Novgorod is 
even more so. Where the Prince of the former was constrained 
to take advice before any important action, and to admit the elected 
City Wardens to his council, the latter goes still further, and may 
be termed, in no uncertain sense of the words, "the Republic of 
Novgorod." 

From early times the spirit of Novgorod had been famous. 
When, in 972, Kiev had offered to send an ordinary official to rule 
the town, in place of the son or nearest relative of the Grand Prince, 
the city had retorted, — "We know how to find another Prince." 
Again, in 1102, when the city elected a Prince for itself, it sent a 
messenger to Kiev, saying, 'Novgorod hath sent us to say unto 
thee, we desire neither thee nor thy son. Send thy son only if he 
have two heads. Already we have Mstislav . . . reared by us to 
rule Novgorod." (Chronicle, Beazley, p. 29.) As Kiev declined, 
Novgorod became more and more democratic. The sovereignty 
was treated as purely elective, often followed by recall or deposition. 
But Novgorod was only Novgorod ; there was no national spirit 
or leadership. The relations of the early free towns of Russia would 
seem to be not dissimilar to those of the Greek City States, — they 
never realized that in union alone could they be strong, and con- 
sequently wasted in internal wars the strength that might have de- 
feated the Tatar when he came, or thrown off the yoke sooner. But 

17 



there was as yet no national feeling, since there was. as yet, no 
real nation. 

Lord Novgorod the Great. "Gospodin Veliki Novgorod," is the 
best example of the city state of the Russian Middle Ages. Kiev 
and Moscow, in their respective periods, were in some respects of 
more importance, but no other town had the same self-sufficiency, 
activity and success. It alone survived, almost unharmed, the in- 
vasion of the Tatars, and succumbed only with the rise of Moscow. 
At its height it is said to have had a population of over 100.000, 
with 300.000 more subjects without the walls. The ruling Prince 
was elected, the Church was strong, but all in all, when not divided 
by party factions, the real power was the Veche, or General As- 
sembly of the citizens. Later, we hear of a "Posadnik," or Gov- 
ernor, in place of the Prince, and elected, like him, by the Veche. 
(Chronicle, Beazley, pp. 40-42.) Though the Church was power- 
ful, its bishops, too, were elected, and in -the Veche was vested the 
decision for war and peace, for banishment and punishment. 

But over and over again certain other characteristics, pecu- 
liarly Slavic, appear, such as the principle of the "necessity of 
unanimity." Many a peaceful solution is lost because a minority 
oppose it, — and in the Novgorod of the 12th and 13th centuries, to 
be in a minority meant, often, to be drowned, killed by the sword 
or expelled. Again lack of political experience, lack of utilitarian 
ideas, — a characteristic Slavic trait, and the failure to make com- 
mon cause against the enemy led to dissolution and downfall. Nov- 
gorod fell before Moscow in 1471, but the rise to power of this 
new center in Russia is another story, best considered after the 
Mongol invasion. 

Thus the Norsemen were the first, none too successful agency 
to try to bring about centralization and a common rule in Russia, 
and towns like Novgorod are the best proof of their failure. The 
Tatars are the second, whose regime we will now consider; Mos- 
cow was to be the third, and the successful attempt. (Kluchevsky, 
vol. I. chaps. XIX, XX.) 

The Coming of the Tatars. 

The Tatars came in 1224 and again during the period from 
1227 to 1240, and while there were periods free from active in- 
vasion and conquest during the 13th and 14th centuries, none the 
less the domination of the Asiatics was continuous until the begin- 
ning of the 15th century, and complete independence was not won 
until 1480. Thus in this period of over two hundred years of 

18 



Tatar domination we may see a very decisive factor which retarded, 
directly, by active interference and indirectly, by offering a model 
of autocratic government once the domination was over, which 
Moscow used as the means to a permanent establishment of a state. 

With the details of the Tatar invasion and domination we are 
not concerned, — only with the methods which they used to exploit 
and corrupt the country, incidentally affording Moscow an oppor- 
tunity to supplant the invader and establish herself in his place. 
The Chronicle of Novgorod furnishes us with much of the detail. 
(Quoted in Beazley, pp. 51-55.) All the Russia that we have men- 
tioned, all the free towns and the Federation of Kiev, as well as 
the numerous dependencies and colonies, — all fell before the Tatar 
except Novgorod. In its Chronicle we read, — that God. and the 
sacred apostolic cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, and the prayers of 
the bishop, of the faithful princes, and of the monks guarded the 
Republic. Only seventy miles away from the town the invaders 
turned back. But continued safety was won only at the cost of 
prompt official submission and the payment of tribute. The Re- 
public "bursts with defiance" but under the wise leadership of Alex- 
ander Nevski yielded to the demands of the Tatars and survived, 
intact though subject, while her great rival Kiev received the full 
fury of the army of the invader, was sacked ( 1240) and so thor- 
oughly destroyed .that not till the 19th century did she again arise, 
as capital of Little Russia. 

Though the Tatar Khans left to each principality its laws, its 
constitution and, usually, its dynasty, the authority of the latter 
became vested in the Tatar Overlord, necessitating for installation 
of a Prince, for settlement of disputes, for defence against charges, 
— indeed for any and every important decision or action, lengthy 
visits to the Khan on the lower Volga, or even at times to the 
Grand Khan in Asia. The Russian people under the local princes 
were compelled to pay heavy taxes, whose severity at times pro- 
voked rebellion followed by heavy punishment. It was, in large 
measure, due to the political adroitness of the Princes of Moscow 
in obtaining the privilege of farming these taxes, that 'they rose to 
power at the expense of the other local rulers. 

But the influence of the Tatars was not shown only in such 
external matters of administration and taxation ; it was as powerful 
and perhaps even more lasting in matters purely social. Russian 
princely and aristocratic families were bribed or forced into mar- 
riage with their Tatar lords ; social custom, dress and, particularly, 
the attitude toward women imderwent a change and reflected more 

19 



and more, with the lengthening of the oriental despotism, ideas 
and methods peculiar to the East. That the previous influence of 
Byzantium had created something of this attitude is undoubtedly 
true, but the consensus of Russian critical opinion is that the Tatar 
dominion doubly encouraged and made permanent what had been 
only a tendency. 

The Tatar domination was also responsible for a great increase 
in the power of the Church, for the Mongols not only allowed the 
Russians to follow and enjoy their own Orthodox faith, but even 
encouraged and supported the Church as an additional means of 
controlling the country. The churches were exempted from taxa- 
tion and the authority of the clergy received the same sanction and 
was placed under much the same system of restrictions as the secu- 
lar power of the princes. Religion as a factor in Russian life and 
culture was thus greatly increased and "Orthodoxy" came to be 
almost synonymous with patriotism, — became, as it were, the out- 
let for patriotism which was, under the regime of the Tatars, denied 
other expression. 

One other result of the period is worthy of notice. The pre- 
Mongolian division of power was more or less broken up. and 
princely power concentrated in the hands of a comparatively few 
of the stronger among them, subject, of course, to the Khan, while 
the power of the next rank in society, the Boyars or nobles of 
high but not princely rank, was weakened. The Tatars maintained 
Prince against Boyars, and strong Prince against weak Prince, pro- 
vided the strong Prince was loyal in his attitude toward the Khan. 
The Tatars, in short, were a stepping stone to centralization, and 
the Princes of Moscow were those who used the circumstances to 
best advantage. (Kluchevsky, vol. I, chaps. XVII, XVIII.) 

The Rise of Moscozv and the Autocracy. 

The rise of Moscow may be traced to several causes ; its ad- 
vantageous geographical position, the movements of colonists in 
her direction, and above all, the policies and personal qualities of 
her Princes. Moscow is near both the Volga and the Oka, com- 
municates with both by navigable tributaries, lying, thus, in a sort 
of Mesopotamia, far from the turmoils of the South, not too near 
the frontier of the East and, consequently, became a harbor for 
the oppressed peoples of other regions. The Tatar sack of 1293 
is almost the only instance of trouble from the Asiatics, though, in 
common with the rest of the Russian towns and cities, she paid 
taxes and suffered submission. But the greatest factor in the 

20 



growth of Moscow was the character of her Princes, — statesmen 
of a new order for Russia, — selfish, but far-seeing, and with a pohcy 
for both internal and external affairs. They were attentive to money 
matters ; indeed, the first of their great rulers was known as "Kal- 
ita," i. e., the Purser. 

This Kalita, 1328-1341, recognizing the power and advantages 
of the Church, obtained permission from the Khan to remove the 
chief bishopric to Moscow and, by adding to this factor of glory 
the additional one of obtaining permission to supervise the gather- 
ing of tribute from the other princes, created a new national cen- 
ter, which even the Mongols, in the times to come, had to recog- 
nize. This connection of the Church's chief seat with Moscow 
proved to be permanent, and the growing Church, with its widely 
scattered threads of influence, its wealth and power, helped to give 
to the new city a position of overlordship that the other factors re- 
inforced. Moscow became "Mother Moscow," a sacred city. 

This Muscovite policy of cunning and utilitarianism was car- 
ried on with increased success by Ivan III, "Ivan Veliki," i. e., 
John the Great, who ruled from 1462 to 1505. With this Ivan we 
are approaching modern times, and Russia of the period seems to 
have taken on more of a modern appearance. John is the so-called 
"Re-uniter of the Russian Land," not yet quite free, at the begin- 
ning of the reign, from the foreign Asiatic overlord, but nearly so. 
Ivan trebled the extent of the Moscow domain, raised it to the 
dignity of a kingdom, arrested the growth and advance of Poland- 
Lithuania, brought under the sway of his city all Russians not 
under Western domination and won a port on the Baltic and on 
the Arctic. Above all, by his marriage with Sophia Palaiologos, 
he united his family with the Eastern Empire and claimed thereby, 
for his country, the inheritance of the dethroned Caesars. He de- 
veloped intercourse with the West, used Western talent in the serv- 
ice of Russia and was, in many ways, the forerunner of Peter the 
Great. A real national feeling began to exist, in a profounder and 
broader sense than had been the case during the period of the free 
democracies, a national feeling based on the recognition and ac- 
clamation of a monarchy. "Muscovy" began to be discovered by 
the rest of Europe, and travelers' tales, sources for much of our 
knowledge of the period, began to appear. The Byzantine crest 
of the double eagle was adopted as well as the term "Autocrat." 
The Church supported all this, and Moscow came to be, in the 
language of the time, "Tsargrad," the third and final Rome, and 
all that the term implies of centralization and political theory went 

21 



with the name. (Kkichevsky, vol. I. chaps. XVI-iXVIII. and vol. 
IL chaps. I-IV.) 

The history of Russia from the time of Ivan Veliki, at the 
beginning of the 16th century to the accession of Peter at the end 
of the 17th, is the history of the varying fortunes of the ^Moscow 
power. Of real democratic assemblies we find no trace, the strug- 
gle for power is rather between the upper classes and the mon- 
archy than between the people and the Tsar. The Sobor alone, 
which indeed bears the name of "General Assembly," but which is 
representative rather of the middle and upper clases, made even 
a pretense of self-government. Tsar and nobles contended for mas- 
tery, and each endeavored to have on his side whatever other power 
or wealth existed in the country. The Sobor was but a pale reflection 
of the freer institutions of the old period. 

The 16th century was a period of conquests and expansion, 
and a corresponding growth of power of the Tsar, the declaration 
of "divine right" in the person of Ivan the "Terrible," the begin- 
ning of serfdom through the activities of Boris Godunov, who 
finally became, himself, Tsar on the death of Ivan's son. The 
"smutnoye vremya," or Time of Troubles began the 17th century, 
and was followed by the election, by the Sobor of 1613, of Michael 
Robanov, the founder of the last line of Tsars. The 17th century 
was a period of internal development, change, reaction, reform, dis- 
content and religious disturbances. This was the heritage of the 
Time of Troubles ; torn asunder by civil war and confusion over 
the dynasty, Russia had stood comparatively still while the rest of 
Europe went through the Renaissance and the Reformation. Rus- 
sia seemed sufficient to herself, — if only she could embody that self 
in a pure form, — aloof from "heretical Rome." "degenerate Con- 
stantinople" and the rest of the non-Russian world. (Kluchevsky, 
vol. 11. chaps. IV-\T; vol. Ill, chaps, I-\T, XIII-XVI. 

By the end of the 15th century the power of the Veche had 
been lost except in Novgorod and Pskov. Elsewhere, indeed, it 
continued to exist, particularly in the southwest, but all electi-\^e and 
political power had disappeared. In 1487, Ivan the Third, with the 
might of rising Moscow behind him, demanded the submission of 
Novgorod, — "No assembly, veche; no elected magistrate; and the 
whole power in the hands of the Tsar." ( Chronicle of Nikon. ) Thus 
far had Moscow grown even at this time. (Kovalevsky, 100, chaps. 
IV, V.) 

With the decay of the Veche, and before the creation of the 
Sobor, there existed but one check on the Tsar, — the "Duma," or 



22 



X 



council of the "Boyars" or nobles. This was not in any sense a 
democratic institution, but was some check on the Autocracy, in 
that the Prince was obliged to ask and to consider the advice of 
the nobles of the Duma in financial, military and executive matters. 
Up to the middle of the 15th century there is evidence that the 
individual Boyar had the right to withdraw from the service of one 
Prince and enter that of another, but with the maturing of the full 
power of Moscow the rights of both Duma and individual Boyar 
became much restricted, and the body became more and more merely 
advisory and aristocratic. 

The "Sobor Zemski," or "land assembly" was the creation, in 
1550, of Ivan the Terrible. This body was formed by the coalescence 
of the Duma and another similar body, the High Commission, to- 
gether with representatives of the lower nobility, the military 
forces, heads of governmental departments, trade-guilds and the 
Church, — all appointed, and mostly drawn from the cities, Moscow 
predominating. The members were such as, in the opinion of Ivan, 
knew best the difficulties of the time and could oi¥er solutions. The 
Sobor has never been abolished by law ; it simply ceased to function 
under Peter in 1698, -but there has been no reason why it should 
not have been summoned at any time since had a Tsar so wished. 
Its history from 1550 is an interesting, and at times promising at- 
tempt to return to real representation and democracy, but the mem- 
bership was never completely representative of all classes, and was 
not elected. The Sobor of 1606 elected Shuiski as Tsar, with the 
aid of the mob of Moscow, and limited his power with a constitu- 
tion. Another Sobor deposed him in 1610 and imposed restrictions 
oti his successor. The most truly representative Sobor was that 
of 1613 which elected Michael Romanov, and which was for the 
first two years of his reign the real authority. Michael bound him- 
self to the Sobor to make neither peace nor war, to make no new laws 
nor to alter old ones, nor to tax without its consent. In 1619 the 
Sobor elected the Patriarchate ; in 1645 it confirmed the coronation 
of Michael's successor, Alexis ; in 1682, it pronounced in favor of 
Peter, and the last Sobor, of 1698, pronounced judgment on the 
Princess Sophia who, in Peter's absence, had tried to usurp the 
throne. But as the Romanovs became stronger, and the period since 
its last election longer, the necessity of the support of the Sobor 
became less apparent, and the institution waned both because of 
this increased power of the autocracy as well as the failing spirit 
and enterprise of the people, a characteristic of the time, not only 
in Russia, but throughout Europe. (Kovalevsky, 100, chap. V; Klu- 
chevsky, vol. Ill, chap. IV.) 

23 



Rccapitulatiou, Economic Conditions and the Condition of Educa- 
tion to the Time of Peter the Great. 

The preceding two sections have given as brief a summary of 
the pohtical and institutional history of the Slavs from their origins 
to the accession of Peter as seems commensurable with an adequate 
understanding of the later developments which are to be our chief 
concern. It remains for this section to indicate the chief economic 
factors and conditions, show how they were in part created and in 
part solved by Western influence, and to sketch the educational con- 
ditions of Russia during these years, keeping in mind that educa- 
tion as an organized system really begins with Peter. 

The story of the Scandinavian inroad which has been narrated 
in connection with the early rise of Novgorod is interpreted by some 
Russian historians as economic in character rather than political. 
The word "Variagi" is said by Kluchevsky to come from a Russian 
root, meaning peddler, vendor, tradesman or merchant, and from 
this point of view the early political development is really to be 
considered as a trade supremacy by the Northmen who were, per- 
haps, in possession of the southern and eastern trade before the 
Slavs entered into the country in great numbers. As a matter of 
fact, regardless of the real meaning of the legend or chronicle, the 
influence of these Northerners can be and has often been overesti- 
mated. They were probably not numerous and it would seem that 
they were soon absorbed by inter-marriage and assimilation. That 
they were an economic influence and an asset in directing the early 
development of the Slavs there is no question, but from all the evi- 
dence it would seem that they were not preponderant in other di- 
rections, for the Slavs brought with thern, as we have seen, their 
own political and social habits and methods. 

The weight of historical evidence points, then, to a fairly well 
established trade between the Norsemen and the Black Sea and 
Azov region, to which the Slavs became heirs. It is noteworthy,' 
in this connection, that the Slavs did not concern themselves with 
agriculture till the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh 
centuries, when changed internal and external conditions made it 
necessary. Trade was everything and determined the nature of the 
political conditions which we have seen. The chief Slav articles 
of commerce were furs from the forests, bee products, and slaves, 
won for the most part in warfare. It was in connection with the 
decline of export trade and the growth of agriculture that serfdom 
arose, the several factors mutually influencing one another, from 
the eleventh century, on. Under such conditions of trade, with ac- 

24 



cumulated stores and wealth, it was natural that fortified, semi- 
independent towns with local government and surrounding de- 
pendent environs should grow up. Examples of these have been 
described. The successive rise and decay of Novgorod, Kiev, Nov- 
gorod again and, finally, Moscow is, in part, the reflection of a 
shifting of economic and commercial importance, from one point 
of the country to another. Military force often helped to deter- 
mine this ; the Tatars, too, helped in the case of Moscow. As for 
the Variagi, while part of them were themselves traders, part were 
also mere mercenaries, hired to protect the trade centers, and usurp- 
ing the power they had been hired to serve. (Mavor, vol. I, book I, 
chap. I.) 

The transition from this first type of economic life was the 
result of two factors, first, the growth in the number and value of 
slaves ; second, the Tatar invasion. The Kiev civilization had al- 
ready begun in the twelfth century to employ slaves in agriculture, 
and the institution of inheritable estates with attached slave culti- 
vators was beginning' to develop, with consequent wealth of a new 
kind. At the same time the rivalry between neighboring Princes, 
which had existed under purely trade conditions, now began to take 
the form of raids on one another's property and estates for the 
sake of capturing additional slaves. It was this consequent lack of 
mutual protection and support which made possible the easy con- 
quest by the Tatars in 1229-40. The Tatars swept Kiev out of 
existence and forced the migration of the Kiev population, slaves 
and. masters, to new regions, — to the Northeast and the plains of 
the Upper Volga. This is one of the first of the migrations in his- 
toric times which has had momentous results. Political and social or- 
ganization was broken up, and new economic conditions established. 
In the new region of the Upper Volga we find the establishment of 
the appanage system corresponding, with characteristic differences, 
to the feudalism of Western Europe, brought to its most centralized 
form. The appanage system was built in different economic con- 
ditions than feudalism, — the village population in the former being 
unfixed and distinctly migratory, in the latter bound to the soil. In 
the former free transfer of "service" was a basic principle, leading 
to endowment of the free servant with land as a measure to secure 
permanent obligation to his Prince. In this latter fact we find the 
germs of serfdom or slavery of the peasant, not to be confused with 
the slavery of the captives in war of the earlier periods. The 
origin of serfdom was gradual and a result of economic conditions, 
— poor productivity, heavy debts and no way in which to pay them. 

25 



There was first the debt due the owner of the territory with which 
the peasant had been "endowed," secondly the state tax. Both were 
heavy, often amounting to all the wealth produced on the land 
necessitating hunting, fishing and peasant industries as a supple- 
ment to the products of the ground. The additional fact of com- 
petition among princely owners, showing itself in stealing culti- 
vators from neighboring smaller estates, or in bribing them to 
change service, resulted in decay of the smaller estates and conse- 
quent embarrassment of the State itself. This is the reason given 
for the celebrated "Ukaz" of Boris Godunov in 1597, which abol- 
ished the right of the peasants to leave land once taken over for 
cultivation by them. The right of the proprietor over the person 
of the cultivator was a later development. (Mavor, vol. I. book I, 
chaps. I-V; Kluchevsky, vol. II, chaps. XII-XIII.) 

The question of Western influence is the connecting link be- 
tween the economic and the educational situation, in all but the 
very beginnings of the latter. During the 15th and 16th centuries 
there was intercourse between Russia and the West, — but no marked 
cultural influence. Only with the 17th century did Russia manifest 
a sense of inferiority, of mental and moral submission, and begin 
to show a desire to borrow not mere amenities of life, but views, 
ideas and fundamental social institutions. This was due funda- 
mentally to one fact, — the inability of the Moscow government to 
make domestic resources meet material requirements. The old feel- 
ing and staunch belief that antiquity had given the country all that 
was needed for development was no longer firm and valid. .De- 
clining faith in national powers and institutions gradually led to a 
desire for guidance and instruction from the alien and hitherto de- 
spised West. Russia saw clearly that the 16th and 17th centuries 
had produced enormous changes in the West, — centralized states, 
greater freedom of labor, technical inventions, bourgeois labor and 
industry, — in all of which she had no part. In Russia the corres- 
ponding period had been spent in war, the upkeep of court, gov- 
ernment and the privileged classes, none of which had or could have 
done anything for the betterment of the country as a whole. Thus 
Russia was more remote from the rest of Europe in the 17th cen- 
tury than she, had been at the end of the 15th. 

Russian culture of the period was essentially Eastern, Byzant- 
ine, and was under the control of the Church as its directing force, 
yet the Church did little to use that culture for any but its own pur- 
poses, paying comparatively little attention to the life of the citizen 
except as a member of the Church. The economic, the social, the 

26 . . 



political life were untouched by the power of the Church, except 
that the Church supported the claims of the Autocracy. But it 
offered no forms for civic or social life, and did little to increase 
the stock of knowledge or means of getting it. On the other hand 
the influence of the West was introduced by the State and acted 
directly on manners and customs, introducing new political and so- 
cial ideas, and opening up new fields of knowledge and introducing 
new methods. Put in other words, the Church influence was ec- 
clesiastic and embraced in its limited way the whole community, 
while Western influence was political, and affected the individual 
citizens as such. These two elements in Russian history persist 
throughout the succeeding centuries, developing and constantly 
growing more complicated, and in their light only are many of the 
problems of Russian history to be clearly understood. Adherents 
of the East come to be called "Russophiles." later "Slavophiles"; 
their opponents are variously called "Gauls," "Freethinkers," "Vol- 
tarians," and finally "Westerners." 

Western influence began with the borrowing of military and 
technical material, guns, machinery, ships, and then skilled labor to 
produce them on the spot. Then came foreign officers to train 
native troops, which had been shown to be decidedly inferior to 
the forces of the West. Next came the development of mines for 
iron and the establishment of Russian centers of industry and manu- 
facture, still under the management of foreigners, imported often 
en bloc and under contract to teach Russian apprentices their trades 
and methods. From these small beginnings the Moscow govern- 
ment at last came to the realization of the absolute necessity of 
developing all the resources of the country, and rewards were of- 
fered for the discovery of deposits of ores and minerals. Foreign 
quarters began to spring up in the larger towns, particularly in 
Moscow, where the German quarter came to be almost a separate 
town. Thus by 1650 Russia had absorbed a great part of the ma- 
terial culture and technique of the West. 

But as yet there was little attempt to introduce Western learn- 
ing and knowledge. Rather the contrary attempt was made, — to use 
the material products of the West and yet retain the Eastern atti- 
tude of mind. The beginnings of the establishment and growth of 
the learning of the West date from about 1650, by which time the 
technical culture was widely diffused. Schools had existed in Rus- 
sia even in the pre-Mongolian period, in which the rudiments of 
Christian' learning had been taught, by the Church for the most part. 
The Tatar invasion had effectively destroyed many of these, but 

27 



some traditions and books had been preserved, and increased by 
what few fragments of medieval learning had crept into Russia in 
the 15th and 16th centuries. The character of these early schools 
is well indicated by the inscription in Church Slavonic underneath 
a picture showing an interior with teachers and students : "In order 
to praise God it is every man's duty to study written signs of 
words. Thus, by learning, he understands (what is) good, (and) 
will succeed (in entering) the heavenly realm (together) with the 
saints. For this reason, Oh Youths, maintain this study; do not 
waste (your) time and (even) hours in (worldly) amusement." 
(Text and picture in 67, p. 18.) 

But in the early part of the 17th century we find two influ- 
ences combining to introduce newer and more modern learning, — 
the Church, and the nobility and people of wealth. The Church's 
interest was due to the necessity of combatting the influence of the 
Jesuits, which was rapidly growing in southwestern Russia ; the 
interest of the higher classes was broader. This new at- 
titude of the Church was in direct contradiction to its opinion under 
Boris Godunov. late in the 16th century, when it discouraged a 
proposed university on the ground that "it was not wise to entrust 
the teaching of youth to the Catholics and I^utherans." The most 
important of the schools established to counteract the Jesuit in- 
fluence was that at Kiev, founded 1631. by the Kiev Metropolitan, 
Peter Mogila, a man well versed in Western culture and who had 
studied at the Sorbonne. It was felt that the heterodoxy had to 
be fought on its own ground, hence the curriculum was almost a 
copy of the Jesuit schools of Poland, and included scholastic phil- 
osophy, theology, rhetoric, Greek, Latin and Slavonic. The school 
was divided into eight classes and Latin was used both as the 
medium of teaching and as the language of conversation for the 
pupils. It was this academy which furnished the bands of scholars 
who corrected the sacred books of the Russian Church, and afforded 
a nucleus for the later work of Peter the Great. It was also the 
center from which came the translations of works of Western cul- 
ture, and its graduates were among the first teachers and writers of 
the following period. 

Many private persons of wealth vied with the State and the 
Church in furthering the enlightenment of Russia. T. M. Rtischev, 
the trusted adviser of Tsar Alexis, built a monastery near Moscow, 
and in 1649 summoned at his own expense some thirty learned 
monks whose function was both to translate foreign books into Rus- 
sian and to teach the Kiev curriculum to those who wished to enter 
as scholars. This is but one example among many ; other families 

28 



of wealth engaged foreign tutors, as did Alexis himself for his chil- 
dren. In 1685 the Moscow Slavo-Graeco-Latin Academy was 
founded, with much the same object as the Academy at Kiev. Thus 
did the two radically different motives for the introduction of the 
new learning continue" to spread knowledge of Western culture. 
The Moscow school was in charge of the two brothers Likhudi, 
learned Greeks who had taken their doctor's degrees at Padua, and 
who were, therefore, not to be suspected of heterodoxy. Toward 
the end of the century they removed to Novgorod and founded still 
another similar school. 

Thus, beginning with the purely material aspects of Western 
culture, Russia gradually came to feel the need of the thought and 
teaching behind them, both as propaganda against heterodoxy, and 
as a background for leisure and social refinement. In this first 
adoption of the culture of the West the motives are mixed and the 
moving forces varied. With the next period, that of Peter the 
Great, education becomes emphatically a matter of State and na- 
tional concern, and with Peter, as before him, education is closely 
connected with economic and political conditions. (Kluchevsky, vol. 
Ill, chaps. XIII, XIV; Milioukov, 69, vol. II, pp. 250-294.) 

This brief survey of the pre-Petrine period has attempted to 
make clear the main springs of Russian history, and to make possi- 
ble an understanding of the problems of Russian education as in- 
fluenced by and in turn influencing the other factors of the n*a- 
tional life. Since education was not, until the 18th century, a con- 
spicuous element of Russian history, the emphasis, up to this point, 
has been on other factors. In the succeeding periods the emphasis 
will be reversed, and education will receive the major attention, and 
be interpreted in terms of the other conditions whose beginnings 
have been sketched in this chapter. 

(See also for this whole period in detail, Soloviev, History of 
Russia. Many sources and documents quoted.) 



29 



CHAPTER III. 
Peter the Great (1689-1725), to Catherine II (1762) 

The preceding chapter has traced the rise and growth of the 
early democracies, the subsequent rise and development of an 
autocracy, and the very beginning of the education devoted to 
state and class ends. We shall be concerned, in this chapter, with 
the conscious creation of a system of education, designed to further 
the more material purposes of the government and its policy of 
educating servants for the state. We shall find, also, the beginnings 
of that opposition which later becomes so much more open and bit- 
ter, and which constitutes the fourth of the movements which we 
are tracing. 

The Problems and the Reforms of Peter. 

The reign of Peter is the beginning of many new things in 
Russia. A man of tremendous vitality and energy, he may justly 
be said to have attempted to lift Russia as a whole and to place it 
in the commanding position which he thought her due. The begin- 
nings of both reform and revolution are to be found in his reign. 

Even to sketch the details of the activities of his career would 
be impossible here ; we can only summarize his main problems and 
his solutions, leaving his general educational policy to a following 
section. The main tasks which lay before Peter were : the political 
unification of his state, the creation of a satisfactory frontier, the 
development of the productive powers of the country, and the in- 
troduction of modern ideas of culture and living, i. e., the social 
regeneration of the people. All this is but another way of saying 
that the West and Russia were more 'and more parts of a larger 
Europe, or that the ideas of autocracy, nationalism and (later) 
orthoaox}' were in the process of formation. 

As means to the attainment of his purposes Peter, first of all, 
developed an army and created a navy. In place of the Sobor, 
which we have seen was declining both in power and real repre- 
sentative value, Peter established a highly centralized bureaucracy, 
though permitting some degree of local self-government for the 
cities. Throughout all these activities his knowledge and experi- 

30 



ence of the Western nations is apparent. There was, moreover, a 
contributing cause for the suppression of the historic representative 
bodies in addition to their decayed character and condition. This 
was the essentially new kind of government and the radically new 
ideas which Peter wished to establish. The Sobors, even had they 
been at this period at their best, were too inculated with the super- 
stitions and the ideas of old Russia, the very Russia which Peter 
wished to change. They and the members of which they were com- 
posed, had they been ever so truly representative, had no knowledge 
of the science and the politics of that West which Peter was com- 
peting with, were too imbued with religious and class standards, 
too illiterate. That there had been no schools to teach them did not 
change the fact, and. Peter could not wait for their enlightenment 
in his own schools. They were also opposed to foreign merchants 
as free competitors, in a word, they represented all that meant 
nothing to Peter. Moreover, the time in which Peter was forming 
his state was throughout Europe a period of suppression of repre- 
sentative government, and a time of "enlightened despotism." With 
this Peter became familiar in his travels, indeed, he is credited with 
expressing a willingness to exchange half his lands for the gift of 
another Richelieu to teach him how to rule. What he saw, in place 
of representative assembles, were well-paid, self-made men in the 
service of the rulers. 

As for economic doctrines, Peter brought back with him the 
doctrine that a country should import as little as possible and ex- 
port a maximum. To carry this doctrine out, meant the training 
of his people, and so hundreds of artisans were gathered and sent 
to Russia to teach their trades, and his ambassadors at the European 
courts were literally employment agents to expedite and continue 
the process. In addition, Russian youths were sent abroad as ap- 
prentices, the costs being paid by the state. A still further develop- 
ment was the establishment of factories ; when Peter came to the 
throne there were no large manufacturing plants, while at his death 
there were some 233 factories and foundries, private or state-owned, 
or subsidized by the state. 

Other changes, more directly social, abound. The breaking 
down of the oriental seclusion of women, the modification of many 
other oriental customs, survivors of the influence of the Tatar 
regime, the spread of culture and education, the abolition of rank 
due solely to birth and the substitution of service for all and merit 
in accordance, conscription for the army as well as for industrial 
and state work and construction, the breaking up of the "house- 

31 



hold" as the taxable unit and the substitution of the capitation tax, 
the creation of a Senate and ten Ministries or colleges, the division 
of the country into governments, the abolition of the Patriarchate 
and the substitution of a Holy Synod with a layman at the head, 
thus making the Church, in a sense, a department of State, — all 
these were items in the whole scheme of the activities of Peter. 

In all this it is important to notice one main cause, — the West. 
The desire to imitate the West, to compete with the West seems to 
have been at the bottom of it all. War was the normal and the most 
frequent state of Russia during Peter's reign and, in a sense, the 
necessity to win led to reforms, and the reforms enabled further 
and better warfare, again leading to further reforms. War, Peter 
said, was the school of the nation to teach if the necessity of re- 
form, and each prolonged the other. But Russia leaves the leader- 
ship of Peter definitely turned to the West. (Kluchevsky, vol. IV, 
chaps. LXI, LXII, LXVII ; Soloviev, vol. XVIII. chaps. I-III ; 
Mavor, book I, vol. I, chaps. V. VI; Kovalevsky. 101, chap. IV.) 

The Educational Reforms and Creations of Peter. 

It is quite comprehensible, then, that Peter should have turned 
his attention to schools and education. To bring his country even 
to the beginning of that development which he wished for her. it 
was impossible to rely forever on imported specialists and artisans, 
— the Russians themselves must understand the processes and the 
technique involved. Only in the light of his reforms, projected or 
carried out, can we understand the new course of education and the 
new types of schools which were now founded. In principle they 
were completely the opposite of those few schools which had ex- 
isted before him and upon his accession. The schools of the 17th 
century had been religious, had been maintained in the interests of 
the Church, and their curriculum had been mainly literary; Peter's 
schools were secular, were a part of the State, and were technical 
in their curriculum. Peter needed, helpers, and these schools were 
to produce both them and his successors. In these schools there 
was little or no attempt made to give a liberal education ; rather, 
the minimum of general ability compatible with definite technical 
knowledge for a career in the service of the State, was the ideal. 
He tried at one time to use the existing Slavo-Graeco-Latin Acad- 
emy for his purposes, but found it useless. 

Peter's first school, in accordance with his own ideas, was es- 
tablished in 1701. in Moscow. — the School of Mathematics and 
Navigation. This existed for fifteen years, and produced not only 

32 



officers for the navy, but civil and military engineers, school teach- 
ers and architects. When the Nayal Academy was established in 
St. Petersburg, in 1715, the Moscow institution became a prepara- 
tory school for the new academy. For these schools most of the 
teachers had to be imported, for there existed no supply in Russia, 
and few of those sent abroad had acquired sufficient knowledge to 
teach. A professor of the University of Aberdeen, Farquharson, 
was director of the Moscow school, and was the author of the 
first Russian manuals of mathematics. In 1712, during a period 
of rest from war, Peter founded the School of Engineering and 
the Artillery School. 

From the day of entrance to these schools, the student was 
considered a servant of the State. Moreover, as by Peter's, decree 
every noble must serve the state, and the only way to such service 
lay through the schools, it became the obligation of the nobility to 
go to school. Opposition on the part of the conservative among 
them, who hated Peter's reforms, led to the opening of the lower 
grades of these schools to other social classes, thus preparing them 
for inferior places in the civil service. Peter created a system of 
ranks or "chin," a hierarchy of civil service. Fourteen ranks ex- 
isted, of which the four highest were hereditary, and promotion was 
made to depend on service and position. Teachers, graduates, hold- 
ers of degrees, all had their appointed "chin." 

Peter also initiated the provision of elementary education by 
the State. It seems to have been the tradition that elementary edu- 
cation could be gotten without schools, and that the latter were 
necesary for higher or secondary education only. The greater num- 
ber of reading and writing schools, before the reform of Peter, 
were those of the religious dissenters, the "raskolniki," though some 
existed, also, in connection with the monasteries, but in them all 
the religious motive was predominant. Peter's first move in this 
direction was the establishment of the "cypher" or arithmetical 
schools, in 1714. Here were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and 
the elements of geometry, teachers being supplied from the gradu- 
ates of the Naval Academy. They were free, and open to all classes, 
and were later made obligatory for all children aged ten to fifteen, 
a law being passed that no man might marry unless a graduate. But 
this ukaz of 1719 could not be enforced. In 1721 a ruling was 
passed requiring the bishops to establish elementary schools in their 
respective eparchies. These schools were also supplied with teach- 
ers from the various academies, but were under immediate super- 
vision of the Holy Synod. But this double system of schools 

33 



weakened the growth of the first cypher schools, — indeed, this is 
but an early instance of an almost constant duplication of elemen- 
tary schools. The curriculum of the Synod schools was less tech- 
nical, and more religious, and this accounted for their greater suc- 
cess. Many of the cypher schools were closed, others were merged 
into the Eparchial system, though the Holy Synod, after Peter's 
death, refused, because of their secular nature, to assume charee 
of the remaining cypher schools. Still another variety of elementary 
schools was created after Peter's death,- — the Garrison Schools for 
the children of soldiers, in 1732. These constituted still one more 
source of competition with the cypher schools, so that by 1750 they 
had completely disappeared. 

One other project of Peter which he did not, himself, carry out, 
remains to be considered, — the creation of an Academy of Sciences, 
in imitation of those so widely spread throughout the Europe of 
the time. Peter had entered into correspondence with Wolf, the 
German philosopher, and with Leibnitz, and had organized a plan 
for the creation of seventeen professorships, and a gymnasium which 
was to act as a feeder for the Academy. That is, it was to be at 
once a learned society, a university and a secondary school. But 
its history did not match the inspiration which planned it, and Peter 
died the year before it was opened. (Tolstoy, 71, pp. 1-38; Kniaz- 
kov and Serbov, pp. 30-54; Milioukov, 69, vol. II. pp. 295-308; Dar- 
lington, pp. 10-15. The account of this period, issued by the Min- 
istry of Public Education, itself, is Source No. 3, "Historical Out- 
line of the Activities of the Ministry of Public Education," Intro- 
duction, chap. I.) 

Peter's Successors, to Catherine the Great, 1762. 

The period immediately after the reign of Peter may be char- 
acterized as one of decline ; Peter's reforms lose, little by little, their 
full force and direction, and the country, through its highest of- 
fices, comes to be more and more ruled and administered by for- 
eigners, — chiefly Germans. Not until Catherine, herself, to be sure, 
a German, do we again find a firm hand guiding afifairs. From 
1725 to 1762 six people occupied the throne, often through force, 
so that the period is known as that of the "palace revolutions." 
This was largely due to the ukaz of 1722, wherein Peter had pro- 
claimed the right of a ruler to name his successor, thus taking away 
the power of election which the Assembly or Sobor had formerly 
possessed. 

34 



The aristocracy and the clergy, followed by the great mass of the 
rest of the people, returned as far as possible to the older ways of 
life. But all the results and efforts of Peter could not be frustrated. 
The other side were loud in their praise and regret, and legends kept 
alive the spirit of reform. The general tendency of the aristocracy 
and the bureaucracy was to rest on Peter's laurels, devoting them- 
selves to pleasure rather than to the further development of the 
plans which had been left unfinished by Peter. A successful effort 
by the aristocracy resulted in the complete enslavement of the peo- 
ple, and the emancipation of their own class, — thus breaking Peter's 
rule that all should serve the State and have rank and award in 
accordance with real merit. This was largely the result of the 
use of the army, especially the regiments of Guards which were 
composed almost entirely of the sons of the nobility, and which 
were, during this period, one of the most important factors in dis- 
posing of the throne. The period from 1725-1762 is also one of 
powerful favorites and of court intrigue, and the court favorites, 
for the most part foreigners, controlled the destinies of the country. 

All this activity of the nobility was not sheer haphazard in- 
triguing, — there was a definite effort so to bind the throne that no 
Tsar might again be as powerful as Peter had been. In 1730 an 
attempt was made on the part of the nobility to limit Anne by a 
constitution, but the plan failed. There were, too, ardent West- 
erners, such as Prince Golitsyn, who wished for reform and cul- 
ture perhaps as strongly as Peter, but who wished it to be under 
the control of the aristocracy rather than an autocrat. Under Anne 
all the vices of an autocrat were exhibited with none of Peter's 
love for his people and their betterment. Her reign is character- 
ized by the power of German favorites, even the army was under 
a German, Miinich (Russian — Minikh.) The manifesto of 1762 
completed the "emancipation" of the "dvoryanstvo" or nobility, and 
by its provisions they were freed from all but voluntary service to 
the state, except in moments of national crisis, and the additional 
obligation of providing for the education of their sons. We shall 
now consider the educational activities of this period. (Soloviev, 
vol. XVTII, chap. IV to vol. XXV; chap. I, Kluchevsky, vol. IV, 
chaps. LXX-LXXIII; Kovalevsky, 101, chap. IV. pp. 109-131; 
Mavor, vol. I, book I, chap. VTI.) 

Though the proclamation of 1762 had freed the nobility from 
the necessity of service, and secured their economic independence, it 
did not mean that the bureaucracy was to be in other hands, or that 
there was no further need for an education fitting the upper classes. 

35 



Indeed, in the domain of education there was, perhaps, more effort 
made to carry out the plans of Peter than in any other. 

First of all, Peter's projected Academy of Science was opened 
by Catherine I in 1726, and liberally endowed. Men of European 
fame were appointed during the next thirty or forty years, such as 
the Bernoulli brothers, Euler, Bulfinger, Muller, and Schoezer. The 
conditions of their appointment required that they actually give lec- 
tures, and since, for some time no students appeared, they were 
forced to lecture to one another, until the experiment was tried of 
importing students from abroad, particularly from Germany. In 
the gymnasium, which had at first a better fate, the languages of in- 
struction were German and Latin, but students of the higher classes 
ceased to attend. In both the gymnasium and the Academy proper, 
the study of languages and mathematics prospered more than that of 
history, for at that time in Russia, as since also, the subject of his- 
tory was not really open to free and unbiased investigation. The 
work of translation, too, which had been part of Peter's plan, was 
carried on. The Academy, for the first forty years was very indif- 
ferently attended, the number of students varying from two to some 
twenty, of all classes, for it must be remembered that this institu- 
tion was not for nobles alone ; indeed, the failure of the nobility to 
attend has been explained by just this fact, that it was not exclusively 
an upper class institution. 

But the desire was growing, on the part of the nobility, for a 
higher education. New interest in foreign cultures and languages 
resulted in the sending of children abroad and the importation of for- 
eign tutors, as well as the establishment and growth of private board- 
ing schools, established by foreigners, which sprang up in large 
numbers during the reign of Elizabeth. The Naval Academy, the 
Kadetski Korpus (founded 1731), the old Slavo-Graeco- Latin 
Academy, all numbered many nobles on their lists; by 1764 there 
were some 27 such institutions giving higher education to some 6000 
pupils. At this period there was no governmental control or check 
upon the private schools, nor any inspection; the ideas of Peter on 
education had been forgotten, and the suspicion of the«State concern- 
ing private teaching had not yet risen to the point of active interfer- 
ence. But there was some apprehension, and the first step was that 
of competition. It was felt that, with more and better facilities*pro- 
vided by the state, with more and better teachers who were also Rus- 
sians, the growth of the private schools would cease. So, in 1755, 
the government established the University of Moscow, and following 
the precedent of Peter, founded a gymnasium in connection with it. 

36 



This new university had three facuhies, philosophy, law and medi- 
cine, all students for the latter two studies being required first to 
pass through the course in philosophy. The professors were bound 
to deliver public as well as university lectures, but as Latin, until 
1768, was the language used, the public profited little. Strict super- 
vision was exercised by the State over the actual instruction. Owing 
to the social prejudices of the nobility, there were two gymnasia in 
connection with the university, one open only to the nobility, the 
other for the so-called "raznochinitzy." In both, modern languages 
were an important part of the curriculurii, but in the school for the 
nobility military sciences played a far more important part than in 
the other, where more plebian and practical sciences were substi- 
tuted. French or German was the language of the class room, for 
the majority of the teachers were, as usual, foreigners. Grants and 
bursaries were given to individual deserving student^. In 1758 a 
similar double gymnasium was established at Kazan, and Shuvalov, 
who was the prime mover in the University-igymnasium movement 
of the time, proposed to create two more universities, at St. Peters- 
burg and at Baturin, together with other gymnasia in the main 
towns, and schools preparatory for the gymnasia in the smaller 
towns. But the demand was not yet such as to justify such founda- 
tions, and the death of Elizabeth effectually put an end to the plans. 

Every incentive was given to raise the number of students at 
the universities. Each student, regardless of his social station by 
birth, was presented with a sword upon entrance to the university 
and received the proper 'chin', assured a good position upon entrance 
into the service of the State, and allowed to count the years of his 
study as years of service. Free instruction and free quarters were 
given to many but, in spite of all these efforts, the number of stu- 
dents seeking instruction at the universities was not large. The 
whole scheme was still in advance of the needs and the demands of 
the people. 

In 1775, by Imperial ukaz an effort was made to bring private 
schools under governmental control, and all foreigners were ordered 
to submit to examination at St. Petersburg, at the Academy of 
Sciences, before teaching or opening schools. But in the absence 
of a system of inspection and control this early effort at supervision 
failed in p'ractice. (Milioukov, 69, vol. II, pp. 308-313. Tolstoy, 71, 
pp. 15-47. Kniazkov and Serbov, pp. 54-60. Darlington, pp. 15-21. 
Source 3, Introduction, chap. I.) 



37 



CHAPTER IV. 
Catherine II to Alexander I. 1762-1801 

The Policies and Activities of Catherine. 

After Peter, Catherine is the next great outstanding figure met 
with in the course of Russian history. The time between had pro- 
duced no great reformer or teacher ; Catherine was to prove to be 
both, but in a different sense than Peter. Catherine was a German 
princess, and usurped the throne, condemning her son, the rightful 
heir, to spend thirty four years virtually in imprisonment. In a sense, 
Catherine was rather the reflection of her age than the creator of its 
spirit ; she accompHshed her reforms rather by following current 
philosophical principles than by setting herself a goal and rushing 
to it, regardless of obstacles, as had Peter. She was more cautious, 
played at politics rather than at war, and never hesitated to undo 
what has been done if circumstances pointed that way. The ideals 
of Catherine, though but partially attained by her, remained in power 
until the freeing of the serfs under Alexander II, in 1861. 

Catherine was the first Russian ruler who could read and write; 
she may be termed the first who was really educated. But her edu- 
cation was an aristocratic one, and this was reflected not only in her 
efforts for the schools, but in her general policy. 

Apart from predominantly external matters such as the three 
partitions of Poland, the conquest of the Crimea and the acquisition 
of the northern coast of the Black Sea, as well as altered foreign 
policies, with a shift to Austria and France away from Prussia, the 
reign of Catherine is remarkable for the attention paid to social and 
class reforms. The chief aim of the state and the Autocracy was not 
the extension of territory or even the consolidation of that which 
existed, but rather the well being of the subjects of the country, an 
aim which, however far short Catherine came in fulfilling it, was 
none the less definitely and frequently expressed by her. Under 
Peter internal well being had been more or less of a means to other 
things, under Catherine it becomes an end in itself. Nor is it only 
from above that the efforts were made for social reform, — the be- 
ginning of social rebellion is also found. Unfortunately, Catherine 
was unable to see that social reform could and must take place from 

38 t 



some other point of view than from that of the nobility. It is per- 
haps because of this error at the very basis of her plans and reason- 
ings, that she only began, rather than finished a process of change, 
to which each succeeding reign has contributed its share. 

Catherine's ideas of reform and advancement bore yet another 
contrast to those of Peter ; they were cultural, not technical, and pre- 
eminently French in origin, and she endeavored to bring them about 
by commissions and discussions rather than by edict and law. Reason 
was more of a religion to her than the faith of the church. Montes- 
quieu was her principal guide and inspiration, and his 'Spirit of 
Laws' her chief source for her doctrines, — often, to be sure mis-read 
and mis-quoted. vShe showed a tendency to use just those doctrines 
which fitted in with existing conditions and her predetermined plans, 
and one which best fitted in with these things was, "Nobility is the 
natural support of autocracy". It was not that Catherine did not 
wish well to the lower orders, but she overvalued her dependence on 
the upper classes. Thus the Legislative Commission of 1766, for 
which Catherine prepared a lengthy philosophical guide, the 'Nakaz', 
or Instructions, accomplished but little, for while the Nakaz was in 
theory radical, Catherine rallied to the support of the nobles when 
the question of the freeing of the serfs was brought up. Further- 
more, tlie light representation of Church and lower classes in this 
commission left the vote in the hands of the nobility. There were 
good intentions and good theory, at least on the part of Catherine, 
but that was all. Still further, there had been risings of peasants in 
the preceding years, and the question was a delicate one. As a final 
result of all the discussions, the nobles gained an even more secure 
and satisfactory position for the time being, and the serfs reached 
a still more unsatisfactory condition, with the one rather barren con- 
solation that serfdom had been recognized as bad in principle, and 
the idea of self-liberation had been circulated. Even the 'Imperial 
Free Economical Society' which Catherine founded in 1765 pro- 
duced nothing but essays ; no action on the prize question, "The 
Relative Advantages of Private and Public Ownership of Land," 
was taken. 

But the peasants themselves were becoming more active. From 
1762-1769, and sporadically to 1775 there were outbreaks and up- 
risings on the part of the peasants, culminating in 1775 in the rebel- 
lion of Pugachev. Pugachev was an illiterate rascal, but he prom- 
ised, posing as Peter III, to liberate the peasants, destroy the no- 
bility, grant full religious freedom and to shut Catherine up in a con- 
vent. It was a social and economic war against the nobility, in prin- 
ciple and in fact. For a year, with an army of peasants and Cos- 

39 



sacks he terrorized the whole basin of the Volga, capturing towns, 
destroying property and constantly growing stronger, even troops 
going over to his cause. It was not until late in 1775 that a large 
force brought these disorders to an end. But the whole movement 
was an omen of future discord and social struggles. 

It was again practical applications of radical principles, this 
time in France, that made of Catherine a reactionary at the end of 
her reign. The French Revolution alarmed her ; radical writers were 
imprisoned and exiled ; it was perhaps too much to expect of her 
that she should permit the application of her theories to make her 
position less secure and force her to be less of an autocrat in her 
person and her place. (Kovalevsky, 101, chap. V. Kornilov, vol. I, 
Introduction. Mavor, vol. I, Book II, chap. V. Soloviev, vol. XXV, 
chap. II to vol. XXIX, chap. II.) 

Educational Reforms and Grozcfh front 1762-1801. 

It is clear that, in spite of Catherine's beliefs, the lower classes 
suffered during her reign. But looking at the condition of other 
affairs, there is quite enough to justify the calling of her reign bril- 
liant. Literature and drama flourished, Catherine herself wrote and 
was a patron of art, memoirs and journalism were part of the literary 
atmosphere, and the Russian Academy of Letters was founded in 
1783. Though German by birth, and French by intellectual leaning, 
she yet was able keenly to feel the spirit and thought of that part of 
Russia — the nobility — with which she identified herself. The move- 
ment for the assimilation and the inculcation of Western culture 
which Peter had begun, perhaps too soon, reached its zenith under 
Catherine, but it was now cultural rather than technical, and this 
time so profoundly modified Russian society, apart from the lower 
classes, that politically and intellectually Russia became acknowl- 
edged as a part of Europe. The reign of France and French 
throughout the continent was repeated in Russia ; the capital became 
French in manners, literature, language and philosophy. Yet it may 
be doubted if the influence was after all very deep, in view of the 
horror and reaction subsequent to the French revolution ; it was not 
until ideas of freedom penetrated lower than the nobility that they 
found fertile and nourishing soil. 

In matters of educational theory, Catherine turned to Mon- 
taigne, Rousseau, Basedow and Locke. Indeed, her "Instructions" 
to Prince Saltykov, tutor to the Grand Dukes, contain almost exact 
summaries of passages from Locke's "Thoughts" (see Tolstoy, 71, 
for parallel passages, pp. 91-100, Appendix.) Catherine's aims were 

40 



as different from those of Peter as his had been to those of the 
Church. Following Montaigne, she considered education as a force 
for moulding the future, to produce a cultured individual and race, 
to form conduct and character, to shape both body ana mind. There 
was no trace of the utilitarian technical ideas of Peter, directing his 
educational activities for the advancement of the power and pro- 
ductive forces of the State. Catherine's activities extended over 
education for girls, a cadet school for the sons of gentlemen, a 
scheme for compulsory national education, learned societies, higher 
education, control of private schools and the training of teachers. 

As early as 1770 Catherine was busy with plans for a system of 
compulsory education for all the males, instruction in which was 
to last eight months. The first act in carrying out this plan was 
the decree of 1775, establishing 'prikazy obstchestvennago prizreniia', 
or Boards of Public Assistance. Upon these boards devolved the 
duty of founding and maintaining schools in all towns and the more 
populous villages. There was one Board for each 'government', 
the number of which she had increased from the ten of Peter to 
fifty, but as only some 15000 roubles were granted to each Board, 
practical difficulties forbade the carrying out of the project. Cath- 
erine continued to work at her plan, corresponded with Grimm in 
Germany and invited him to supervise the education of the Empire. 
Upon his refusal, and following the advice of Joseph II of Austria, 
whose system of primary education she had decided to adopt, she 
invited a Serbian, Jankovicz, who was familiar with both the Rus- 
sian language and the Austrian school system, to come to Russia 
and take charge. In 1782 a Board or Commission for the Estab- 
lishment of Schools was created, with Jankovicz as one member, 
and with the task of providing schools, teachers and texts In 1786 
was promulgated the Statute relating to National Schools. In imi- 
tation of the Austrian system, two grades of schools (primary) were 
provided, glavnyia or major, in the main towns, and malyia or minor, 
in the villages and district towns. The major school had four classes, 
the three first each a year in length, the last, two years, whereas the 
minor school in district towns had but two classes, in villages, but 
one class. The curriculum extended from the three R's with re- 
ligion and grammar in the lowest class of the village minor school to 
geometry, mechanics, architecture and 'physics in the fourth class of 
the major school. Control was in the hands of the Commission, but 
delegated, in practice, to each local prikaz or Board of the 1775 
decree. But one of the essential details of the Austrian system, 
namely the establishment of provincial Normal schools was not car- 
ried out in Russia, with a consequent dearth of teachers, for the one 

41 



training school, established at St. Petersburg, could not supply the 
demand. The gaps were filled, as far as possible, with pupils of 
the schools and teachers from the ecclesiastical seminaries. 

The success of these schools was not as great as was expected. 
In the first place, funds, both for teachers as well as for the main- 
tenance of the schools themselves, were lacking, and while local con- 
tributions often sufficed to keep them open, when these failed, the 
schools closed. Moreover the nobility did not send their children to 
these schools, preferring private tutors or the exclusive schools for 
the upper classes. Thus it was mainly the schools established in 
large centers, where there were families of the trading, middle-class 
order, that the schools prospered. Lack of teachers, money and 
supervising genius were the main causes of the disappointing results 
of Catherine's plans. 

For the education of girls, Catherine pursued quite a different 
plan. Up to this period, the education of girls had taken place at 
home or in convents ; of schools there had been few or none except 
the private schools, a product of her reign, and attended mostly by 
the children of resident foreigners. In 1764 plans were sanctioned 
for a school, at Siiiolny Monastery, of two departments, one for 
the middle class pupils, the other for the girls of the nobility. This 
school admitting girls from six to eighteen, was composed of four 
grades, and had a different curriculum for the two different social 
classes ; household management and domestic science being given 
to the middle class pupils in place of the more 'polite' subjects for 
the nobility, while at the same time they had in common a course of 
general studies, such as Russian and foreign languages, arithmetic, 
geography and history. French was the language of instruction up 
to 1783, when Russian, on the advice of the School Commission, 
was substituted. All this was an excellent means of, breaking up 
the last lingering traces of an oriental attitude toward women, and 
the beginning of future educational schemes for them. 

Other special institutions were opened during Catherine's 
reign ; the Shliakhetnyi Korpus, a cadet school for the sons of gentle- 
men; the Corps of Pages, in 1785 ; the School of Mines, in 1774; and 
the 'Blagorodnyi Pansion', a secondary boarding school, in connec- 
tion with Moscow University, in 1778. The Russian Academy of 
Letters, founded in 1783, has been mentioned, and had for its spe- 
cial duty the purification of the Russian language. Indeed, all 
through her reign, Catherine was constantly endeavoring to have 
Russian used wherever possible in teaching. 

In spite of all these efforts to make the Russian educational 
system fit for the social needs of the time, it was quite evident, from 

42 



the fact that so many sought their education abroad ,that the schools 
were not satisfactory. Glasgow, Leipzig, Gottingen,. Edinburgh, Ox- 
ford, Paris, Strassburg,- — all contained Russian students; and in ad- 
dition to this higher education abroad, there were the private schools 
which we have already mentioned, kept by foreigners, usually 
Frenchmen or Germans, who used their native language in their 
teaching. Foreign tutors employed in families were very numerous. 
These conditions led to state action in the matter. 

In 1757 ineffectual efforts had been made to do away with the 
least desirable of the foreign tutors and teachers in Russia. But the 
first serious effort was that of Catherine in 1784, when the School 
Commission was directed thoroughly to investigate private schools 
and boarding establishments and carefully and thoroughly examine 
the owners and teachers. Those kept by foreigners satisfied the 
investigators better than those kept by Russians, only one of the 
former and all of the latter being closed. Those allowed to continue 
were placed under the control of the Commission and made to come 
up to requirements. By the Nakaz of the same date it became the 
duty of the Director of National (primary) Schools to supervise 
both the teaching and the premises of the private schools. Russian 
was made an obligatory subject, and half yearly examinations of the 
pupils in the presence of the Director were required, who had to sub- 
mit, in his turn, a yearly report on the private schools under his su- 
pervision. The right to open further private schools was made sub- 
ject to the permission of the Commission, who were first to be satis- 
fied concerning curriculum, methods and teachers. This is the be- 
ginning of the later strict supervision of all educational activities 
proceding from other than state authority. While this action did 
much to set a standard for education, low as it was, it also prevented 
the experimentation in the nature of different types of education 
suited to the character of the different classes of Russian society, and 
permitted the universal rule of one type, imposed from above, and 
suited best to the ideas of the upper classes. 

The period of Catherine is also noteworthy for an expression 
of a social demand for better education, coming from the middle 
class. -This was the movement initiated by the journalist Novikov, 
Professor Schwartz of Moscow University, and the Freemason circle 
of Moscow. The whole movement was influenced by the philan- 
thropic motive, and Novikov as early as 1775 had published and 
written in the interests of this movement. In 1777 he established 
two schools in St. Petersburg, which were maintained from the 
profits of his journal, 'Utrennii Svet', — Morning Light. In 1779 he 

43 



went to Moscow and leased the University Press from the author- 
ities, and began the period of his greatest activity, pubHshing books, 
editing magazines, opening book-shops, translating from foreign 
sources, and gathering, together with Schwartz, who had been ap- 
pointed Inspector of the university's pedagogical seminary, a group 
of students and workers, devoted to the propagating of their doc- 
trines. One of his main ideas w^as to further the enlightenment of 
the Russian people by bringing in well-qualified teachers from 
abroad, and by also training native Russians to second them. He 
founded 'The Friendly Learned Society,' one of the objects of which 
was to raise funds for the education of Russians both abroad and at 
home. The historian, Karamzin, was thus educated. All this seems 
very innocent, but Catherine had become alarmed at the practical 
application of ideas to the reforms of government in France, and 
ordered the persecution of the Masons and the Learned Society, 
finally bringing about the imprisonment of Novikov for a term of 
fifteen years in the fortress of Schusselburg. This was but one more 
instance, in addition to the afifair of the private schools, of the m- 
terference of the State in any activity concerning itself with educa- 
tion, and effectually set back the spirit of public service in education 
for many years. 

Thus, all in all, the whole 18th century, in spite of efiforts on 
the part of both Peter and Catherine for the lower and middle 
classes, had really bettered only the nobility to any \-ery appreciable 
degree. The clergy and the upper classes of cultured men and 
women had prospered and progressed, but largely at the expense of 
the other portions of the whole society. The nobility and their class 
ideas had prevented the full fruition of a comprehensive system for 
the education of classes below them, — and one class, the serfs, had 
received no attention at all. Indeed, for several generations yet to 
come, until late in the 19th century, no efifectiv^ scheme was to be 
found for them. It is estimated that out of the whole population of 
Russia at the end of the 18th centyry, only 1 in 800 was" receiving 
any education. 

Catherine's son, Paul, ruled from 1796 to 180L with no very 
noteworthy results. He was a reactionary in education as in all 
other things, but reigned too short a time to accomplish very much. 
(Milioukov, 59, vol. II, pgs. 313-29; Tolstoy, 71, pgs. 28-100. Kniaz- 
kov and Serbov, pp 61-159; Darlington, pp. 21-35. For detailed 
sttidy with plans and documents, see Betsky's contemporary account. 
Source 3, Introduction, chaps. II, III.) 



44 



CHAPTER V. 

Alexander I. 1801-1825 

Political and Economic Adjustments tinder Alexander. 

With Alexander and the beginning of the 19th century, we are 
very near to our own time, and Russian society as well as the in- 
fluences producing reform and reaction become infinitely more com- 
plex. Russia, under Alexander, is more than ever a part of 
Europe. 

Paul had been a despot, but not an 'enlightened one as his 
mother had been, and only the shortness of his reign prevented him 
from undoing all that she had done, in her autocratic way, to further 
the afifairs of Russia. So Paul comes to resemble the successors of 
Peter, in that he lies, as a bitter reactionary, between the nobler and 
greater Catherine and Alexander. Paul had pleased only the Church, 
had closed the printing presses, forbade the importation of books, 
recalled the students from foreign universities, and made the en- 
trance of foreigners into Holy Russia almost impossible. So the 
accession of Alexander, who was thought to be a liberal, and more 
like his grandmother than his father, was hailed by all classes. Paul 
had bred social disturbances, too, and they have extended from high 
to low in rank, and in 1801, a court conspiracy, supposed to have 
sought merely his abdication, had resulted in his death. 

But the influence of Catherine lived still in her grandson ; she 
had separated him from his father and attended herself to his educa- 
tion, bringing him into contact with the people and thoughts that 
had influenced her. His tutor had been a Swiss revolutionary, 
Laharpe, and from him Alexander absorbed the French revolution- 
ary tendencies and beliefs in free institutions which characterized 
the years of his reign up to 1812. But, again, like Catherine, Alex- 
ander was a theorist and a dreamer, and contact with the world of 
facts and reality brought him, as it had brought her, to a reactionary 
point of view. The turning point came in 1812. 

His first act was to reverse the decrees of Paul concerning the 
press, the importation of books, the right to study abroad and the 
freedom of entrance of foreigners. In a manifesto published on the 
day of his accession, he promised to rule 'according to the laws and 

45 



spirit' of Catherine. But the spirit of Paul hved in him, too, though 
it was to take time and trouble to develop it. He gathered around 
him a circle of friends, — radicals, who constituted a 'secret council', 
and produced innumerable schemes of reform, all highly abstract 
and ignoring the actual conditions of the empire. But, beyond re- 
organizing the Council of State, the Senate and the Ministries, only 
one thing of even comparative importance was accomplished. In 
1803, a law was promulgated, as a result of their deliberations, which 
permitted land-owners to liberate their serfs, on conditions fixed by 
mutual agreement, and sanctioned by the State. Naturally, this led 
to the freedom of very few of the serfs, but it marked the beginning 
of a new spirit, quite different from that of the time of Catherine, 
and one that was to gather increasing momentum with the coming 
years. The actual freeing of the serfs did not come, however, until 
1861. 

The intricacies of the wars with France (Napoleon), Sweden, 
the Caucasus, Turkey and Persia do not concern us here ; the social 
changes resulting from the intercourse of his army with the rest of 
Europe will be traced in the following section. After the treaty of 
Tilsit, in 1807, Alexander again turned to internal questions and re- 
form, and enlisted the aid of. Michael Speransky, the son of a coun- 
try priest, and a man of remarkable talent. Upon order, Speransky 
drew up a constitution granting to all ranks, even serfs, civil rights, 
and to all property owners, political rights. This implied freedom 
for the serfs, and the scheme carried with it a whole new set of 
political institutions, designed to render the power of the throne 
quite as authoritative as under the old system. So difficult was it for 
even a reformer of liberal ideas to think outside the limited ideas of 
autocracy. Little of the plan was actually adopted ; the scheme is 
more a part of the history of Russian thought than of political re- 
form, but it shows the tendency. 

By 1812 the alliance of Napoleon and Alexander had reached 
the breaking point, and Napoleon invaded Russia, reaching Moscow, 
only to retreat in disorder and defeat. Alexander, following him, 
achieved by his successes a new political position in Europe. The 
Concert of Europe formed in 1815, to preserve Europe from revol- 
utionary principles and to guarantee the status quo and the peace 
of the continent, was followed by the Holy Alliance of Alexander. 
The events of the years 1812-1815 had proven to be the turning point 
in his career, and the mysticism which had always been a part of 
his nature now seemed to rule it. According to the terms of the 
Alliance, Russia, Austria and Prussia bound themselves to 'base 

46 



their conduct in the administration of their respective states ... on 
no other rules than the principles of the Christian rehgion . . . ' 

But the miHtary success of Russia was paid for by the improv- 
ishment of the country. Money had to be borrowed from abroad. 
Industry and manufacturing had developed only slowly, and the 
superior value of free as opposed to serf labor was not yet fully or 
universally believed. This led to questions of tarifif and the best way 
of aiding the factories as producers of wealth, and this in turn to 
the question of labor and the serfs. In 1816-1819 the peasants of the 
Baltic provinces received their personal freedom, but remained in 
economic dependency on their former owners, who retained the 
possession of the land. In 1818 Alexander's minister Arakcheev was 
ordered to prepare a scheme for the gradual emancipation of the 
serfs, which 'would not be burdensome for the landowners, or likely 
to need the use of compulsion'. Alexander died 'unexpectedly, in 
1825, just after ordering an inquiry into the secret societies which 
had been for some time agitating for reform. These will be con- 
sidered in the next section. (Kornilov, vol. I, chaps., IV-XIII. 
Mavor, vol. I, Book II, chap. VII., Book III, chap. III. Short 
summary in Beazley, Book III, chap I. Zilliacus, chap. I. Kovalev- 
sky, 101, chap. VI.) 

The Social Unrest and the Secret Societies. 

The beginning of the social unrest which has ciiaracterized 
Russia with increasing power and extent with the evolution of the 
country, began, in a very real sense, with Peter the Great. Social 
unrest had exi.'^ted before him, but the type of disturbance and dis- 
satisfaction which is at issue here is the gradually growing discontent 
with the autocracy, and the efforts made to overthrow it and put 
in its place a representative form of government. Peter literally 
flung his country into the current of European and Western civil- 
ization, and it was not to be expected that she would absorb only 
those elements of that civilization which were pleasing to the State. 
With the acquisition of technique and outward culture, with the 
learning of the arts and sciences of trade and industry, the founda- 
tions were laid of political and social upheaval which, though they 
took long to mature, none the less were prolific of consequences 
m the long run of a century. Nor did the playing with radical ideas 
and the promising of freedom and reform, which was so charac- 
teristic of such rulers as Catherine and Alexander I, have any effect 
in stemming the tide, — rather it heaped up a greater mass of dissat- 
isfaction which, when it found opportunity for action, cared less for 

47 



consequences than might have been the case with a movement that 
had had a history of partial success behind it. 

Jt was the struggle against Napoleon that gave the opportunity 
and the Inspiration lor collective activity against the system of autoc- 
racy Alexander's troops, both officers and men, In their invasivjn 
of Germany and France, and in their association with their allies, 
absorbed a new spirit and a new inspiration. Europe was full of 
democratic ideas and democratic action which not even the despotism 
of Napoleon had been able to destroy. It was seen that the Germans 
owed much of their freedom, in spite of an oppressive government, 
to the Tugendbund and the leaders of that movement, and in France 
they found universal evidence of the powers and abilities of a nation 
imbued with the traditions of the Revolution, and finally the Car- 
bonari of Italy appealed to the more violent and impatient among 
the Russian thinkers who were dreaming and planning for a Russian 
republic. 

After the signing of peace and the return of the troops, con- 
spiracy became prevalent, and Alexander's theoretical liberalism only 
encouraged it ; moreover, at this very period, Alexander was turning 
his back upon his earlier beliefs and plans and falling more and 
more under the influence of the reactionary minister, Arakcheev, 
and driving still further the spirit of rebellion which judicious re- 
forms might have satisfied before it became definitely organized and 
committed to action. The organizations took the forms of clubs, 
masonic orders, literary and educational circles and, finally, purely 
political organizations. ]\Iuraviev. Orlov. N. Turgeniev, are names 
connected with the early movement; the 'Circle of the Lovers of 
Nature' developed into the 'Society of United Slavs', and finally 
merged with the 'Southern Society', the most significant of the early 
secret societies. In 1816 the 'Union of Salvation' or of 'The Faith- 
ful and True Sons of the Fatherland', was founded by Muraviev, a 
colonel in the army, and organized by Pestel, an adjutant. The latter 
was in favor of the more radical constitutions and methods of the 
Italian secret societies, the former for legal co-operation with the 
Government for gradual amelioration of conditions, basing his ideas 
on the constitution of the Tugendbund. The Society finally accepted 
the more moderate platform, and named itself, in 1818, 'The Union 
of Welfare'. The propaganda of this organization was directed in 
four ways : first, philanthropic, for the relief of peasant conditions; 
second, educational, for the army, the main agent in this matter using 
Lancasterian schools among the regiments and the people of the sec- 
tion they were quartered in; third, the betterment of justice, and 

48 



the working out of new conceptions for courts ; fourth, economic, 
for improving the financial affairs of the nation. 

By 1819 the membership of the Welfare association had grown 
to some 200, and with increased dissatisfaction with the government, 
the policy of the order seemed, to many, far too conservative. In 
addition to this internal discord, a serious mutiny among some of the 
troops led to a decision for disbanding. In 1821 the society was 
disbanded, to reform, however, almost immediately, in two new 
groups.— 'The Northern Society', moderate, under Muraviev, and 
The Southern Society', radical, under Pestel. Pestel preached not 
only regicide, but the necessity of the annihilation of the entire royal 
family, while Muraviev was working for a limited monarchy. 

Plans, on the part of Pestel's organization, had proceded so far 
as the perfecting of a scheme to make the Emperor prisoner, during 
his presence at the review of the Southern Army, to seize the forti- 
fied towns of the district, and then to communicate with the North- 
ern section, who in turn would arrest the most important and dan- 
gerous members of the government there. But the unexpected death 
of Alexander upset the plot, which might well, in view of the cir- 
cumstances, and the lack of secret police, have been successful. In 
the uncertainty of the moment, with a new candidate for the throne, 
Nicholas, to be considered, their plans went astray, and after open 
insurrection and fighting, the entire conspiracy was broken up, and 
the leaders, including Pestel and Muraviev. hanged. Such was 
the 'December' uprising, and the 'Dekabrists'. (Kornilov, vol. I, 
chaps. XII, XIII. Zilliacus, chap. I. Kovalevsky. 101. chap. VI. 
Mavor, vol. I, Book II, chap. VIII. Mihoukov, 103, chap. V to pg. 
260, and chap. IV. pp. 160-180. Ivanov-Razumnik, vol. I, chap III.) 

Educational Construction and Reaction under Alexander. 

In educational as in other matters, Alexander showed both a 
constructive and a later reactionary spirit, the year 1812 being the 
approximate date of division. The early period was influenced by 
the ideas and feelings which he had received in his early training, 
from grandmother and tutor, the later years by the facts of the 
world around him^ when he had found that his theories were of 
little use and only too often misunderstood and carried to extremes 
beyond his intentions. Religious mysticism, too, had much to do 
with his reaction in the second half of his reign. 

It is interesting to note the social construction of Russia at the 
beginning of the 19th century. The peasantry constituted some 
94.5%, the lower ranks of the urban population some 2.57o, the 

49 



merchants less than 1%, the parish clergy some 1%,, finally the 
nobles and ofificials, from 1.25 to 1.57o- The total population was at 
that time about 36,000,000. composed of various races (see Mavor, 
vol. I, appendix II.) under domination of the Russians. (For further 
details on these statistics, see Kornilov, vol. 1, chap. II.) The divi- 
sion of this total mass of population into 'intelligentzia' and 'people', 
which had begun in Peter's day, and which had not been the condi- 
tion in the old primitive Russia, still existed at the beginning of the 
19th century. Peter it will be remembered, had paid some attention 
to the education of the masses, but his schools had, none the less, 
created the first generation 'of intelligentzia ; Catherine had also 
turned her attention to schools for all, but the intelligentzia had 
prospered most. 

Alexander's educational problem, as he saw it, was to create 
an adequate and permanent national system of schools, which should 
at once avoid the superficialities of Catherine and the too material- 
istic bias of Peter, and provide opportunities for all classes of society. 
His chief advisors were his old tutor. La Harpe, and a group of 
nobles, Novosiltsev, Count Zavagovsky and Prince Czartorysky, 
together with Speransky, Stroganov and a number of others. 
In 1802, Alexander abolished the School Commission and created 
in its place the 'Ministerstvo Narodnago Prosvestcheniia', or Min- 
istry of Public Enlightenment. The first minister to occupy the post 
was Count Zavadovsky, a mere figurehead, whose work was really 
done by M. N. Muraviev, an early tutor of the Tsar. The super- 
vision of this new ministry extended over all educational institutions, 
public libraries, museums, public and private printing presses, the 
censorship of printed matter, with the exception of the schools under 
control of the military and naval authorities, the Cadet Corps, the 
schools of the Holy Synod and the Girls' schools under the protec- 
tion of the Empress Marie. As a consequence, budgets, reports and 
investigations have never been under one supreme authority. From 
1803-1804 regulations and statutes reorganized the Empire into edu- 
cational districts and governments, with a Curator (Popechitel) for 
each of the six districts in full charge of affairs, but residing at St. 
Petersburg. Three more Universities were founded and three others 
projected, their constitutions being framed on German models. 

The universities were considered of paramount importance for 
two reasons : in the first place, it had been seen that one of the main 
difficulties in the way of the creation of a good system of schools in 
Russia had been the lack of well qualified teachers, and the 'pre- 
liminary rules' for the universities required that each should have a 
training school attached, where students should be mamtained at the 

50 



expense of the state, upon binding themselves to serve for six years 
after graduation ; in the second place, a part of the actual adminis- 
tration of the schools was to be in their hands. 

In addition to the founding of the new universities, a new com- 
plete system of secondary and primary schools, three grades, were 
established ; each chief provincial town was to have at least one 
gymnasium, each district town at least one district school, and each 
parish, if possible, one parish school. The surviving major and 
minor schools of Catherine were reorganized and assimilated. The 
Council of each district, which governed the universities, also con- 
trolled the primary and secondary schools through an annually 
appointed Schools Committee of six professors undei- the leadership 
of the rector of the university. 

The intimate connection between the educational plans of Alex- 
ander and the general political situation is shown clearly in a report 
of Speransky in 1803. "In the present state of affairs we do not 
find the first elements necessary for the establishment of a constitu- 
tional order. How it is possible to separate the legislative power 
(from the executive) without an independent institution for its 
maintenance? How introduce such an institution ... in the 
absence of education? How develop a public opinion, create a na- 
tional spirit without freedom of the press ? How allow or introduce 
freedom of the press in the absence of education? . . . How 
can the laws be observed without education . . . ?" (Quoted 
by Kornilov, vol. I, pps. 109-110.) Yet either to abolish serfdom in 
the absence of education, or to spread education under the condi- 
tions of serfdom, seemed dangerous, if not impossible. Slow and 
cautious efforts for gradual amelioration seemed the only method to 
escape from this dilemma. But Alexander and his co-workers were 
perhaps the first to see the real problem, for Peter had forced his 
ideas on an unwilling society, and Catherine had seen only a part 
of the difficulties involved. 

The same effort to prepare the ground for social and political 
advancement is apparent in the curriculum of the gymnasium where, 
in addition to science, mathematics. Latin and modern languages, 
there were given courses in logic, aesthetics, psychology, ethics, law 
and jurisprudence and political economy. It was an effort to give a 
complete general education to those who could not go as far as the 
University. This aim is stated both in the Statutes, and by Count 
Razumovsky, the Minister of Education in 1812, in a letter to Rom- 
mel, — "Je crois devoir vous mettre au fait des vues, que Ton a suivies 
dans le plan d'enseignement actuel. . . . tout le monde ne 
pouvant pas avoir I'occasion de continuer les etudes aux universites, 

51 



et les gymnases recevant des enfants de tous le etats, gentilshommes 
negociants, artisans et autres, ceux d'entre eux, — qui sont obliges 
d'achever leurs etudes aux gymnases, ou qui selon leur etat n'ont 
pas besoin d'asquerir des connaissances plus etendues, ont I'occasion 
d'y acquerir des notions des objects surmentionnes, autant qu'ils 
conviennent a chaque etat. . . ." (Quoted, Darlington, p. 42.) 
But while motivated by the highest ideals, Alexander's plans, like 
those of his predecessors, were not fully in accordance with the actual 
conditions. It will be remembered that some 94.5% of the inhab- 
itants of Russia at the beginning of the 19th century were peasants. 
There was also too much imitation of foreign models, especially in 
the case of the universities. 

Difficulties began to arise in two directions : first, the self gov- 
ernment of the universities clashed with the rest of the autocratic 
system, and many of the better and more valuable professors re- 
signed when it became apparent that the self government was only 
a theory; second, many of the professors were foreigners, still, and 
lectured in Latin, which was not well understood for the good and 
sufficient reason that the training of students in this language, in view 
of lack of previous opportunities to learn it, was very poor. Students 
were often admitted to the university with no knowledge of Latin, 
merely upon their pledge to acquire the language during their resi- 
dence. It can be readily seen that advanced subjects of instruction, 
presented in an unfamiliar or unknown language were of little value 
to the students, or Russian society, as a whole. One further difficulty 
existed in the class feeling of the nobility who disdained to send 
their sons to institutions attended by members of the lower classes, 
and in their desire to hasten the entrance of their sons into the pub- 
lic service which a long term of schooling delayed. But the ukaz 
of 1809 made a university diploma or its equivalent a necessary con- 
dition for entrance into public service and, to meet the class feeling, 
dormitories were established in connection with the universities for 
the use of the sons of the upper classes. 

Nor was the condition of the gymnasia, the district schools and 
the parish schools any better ; many of the same difficulties existed 
with the addition of those peculiar to each type. The gymnasia 
suffered from the same class feeling, competition with private schools 
and special schools for the nobility, the length of their course, the 
lack of good teachers, the character of the curriculum, which, with 
the best theoretical motives, crowded too much into the course lor 
practical assimilation and use, — a fact which was the basis of the 
criticism of the next Tsar. The district schools suffered from the 
too early withdrawal of 'the students, poor teachers, and lack of 

52 



funds. The parish schools were in the worst condition ; no public 
funds were available, and the cost of their upkeep was born by the 
generosity of individuals, church and lay, and the local authorities, 
the nobility as a class doing little or nothing. In spite of all that 
could be done, the parish schools of the Act of 1804 practically dis- 
appeared in the course of a few years. 

By 1810 it was quite evident that the educational reforms and 
administration of 1803-4 had failed. The group of reformers who 
had guided the early plans of Alexander gave way to Speransky, a 
man of intellect and ability, but cautious, and with a belief that all 
things should progress together, and holding that education, without 
freedom, or vice versa, would be destructive to the country. In 1811, 
private schools were subjected to still further discipline and required 
to pay a tax of 5% on all receipts from fees. But nothing was done, 
in a large way, until the appointment of Count Uvarov, in 1810, as 
Curator of the St. Petersburg District, a scholar who, both in tb.is 
capacity and later as Minister of Education, has had very great 
effect on the progress of education in Russia. In 1811 he presented 
a series of proposals to the Minister of Public Instruction, which 
involved a readjustment of the aims of the schools, bringing them 
more nearly in accord with the real conditions of the society of the 
time, though they involved, perhaps, a theoretical retrogression. He 
advocated the study of such subjects in the gymnasia as were appro- 
priate to the age and conditions of the students, leaving the advanced 
legal and philosophical studies for the university. This meant con- 
centration on religion, the mother tongue, history, geography, math- 
ematics, literature, grammar and the classical languages. "The gen- 
eral aim of the gymnasia is to prepare its pupils for the 
universities." The classics were introduced by Uvarov both be- 
cause he was a student of the subject, and because, as stated above, 
the gymnasia had failed, heretofore, to provide the necessary knowl- 
edge of Latin to enable students at the universities to follow the lec- 
turers who spoke in that language. Thus was introduced the study 
of tlie classics, destined to prove a subject of constant debate for 
later educators. So successful was the scheme of Uvarov, and so 
wide was the agreement among educators that it sviited the condi- 
tions of the time that, in 1819, it was adopted for all the districts 
of Russia. 

The burning of Moscow occurred in 1812, and the year marks 
a turning point not only in the history of external and foreign af- 
fairs in Russia, but in its internal affairs as well. International mat- 
ters rather than internal welfare now occupied Alexander's atten- 
tion, and the general reaction of the ruling classes of Europe and 

53 



their fear of liberal ideas dominated him. Moreover, the result on 
the people of Russia, as a whole, was to bring about a revulsion 
against foreign ideas and foreign customs, manifesting itself par- 
ticularly in a new feeling against foreign teachers. Russian thought, 
as a whole, became more conservative, more narrowly national, as a 
reaction against the foreign invader, the Anti-Christ, who had trans- 
gressed against Holy Russia. All classes shared in this attitude, and 
the really free minds became less numerous and less able to work out 
their ideas. Only among the secret societies discussed in the last 
section was there freedom of thought, and action directed to a 
freeing of the country. Religion became, both with Tsar and with 
the nobles a new instrument for the preservation of the status quo, — 
Alexander, it is said, was wont to open the New Testament, at ran- 
dom, for guidance on the questions of the day. The English Bible 
Society, founded a branch in Russia in 1812; the Jesuits, too, played 
a part in the affairs of the country at this time. 

The spirit of reaction first showed itself in the field of education. 
Magnitsky, a member of the Council of Education, wrote, at this 
period, "The whole mischief which has been observed in our univer- 
sities has been caused by the education, the books and the men we 
have imported from the German universities. There the infection 
of belief and revolutionary principles which started in England 
and gained additional strength in pre-revolutionary France has been 
erected into a . . . system." (Quoted, Darlington, pg. 55.) The 
religious motive in education appeared in the person of Prince A. 
N. Golitzin. who became head of the Bible Society soon after its 
foundation, and who was also Super-Procurator of the Holy Synod, 
a boyhood friend of the Tsar, in his youth a free thinker, but who 
had become a mystic in his later life. Branches of the Society were 
established throughout the country and soon brought anew to the 
attention of the authorities the need for elementary schools, for if 
the society was to be sincere in its attempts to popularize the Bible, 
of necessity it had to provide the means for learning to read it. 
In 1815, Golitzin became Minister of Education and in 1817 the 
Ministry of Public Instruction was combined with the Holy Synod. 
The Act of 1817 read, in part, "Desiring to have Christian piety as 
the permanent basis of true enlightenment, we have deemed it useful 
to unite the work of education with the work of all creeds into one 
department under the name of the Ministry of Public Worship and 
Popular Education". (Quoted, Kornilov, vol. I, pg. 189.) An ex- 
ample of the lengths to which this tendency went in the hands of 
some of the reactionaries, is the University of Kazan, to which Mag- 
nitsky was sent by Golitzin, in 1819, to make a special inquiry. Mag- 

54 



nitsky wished to close the institution entirely but, opposed by Uvarov 
and the Tsar in this, he completely reorganized it ; eleven professors 
were dismissed, a special director for morals appointed, and the 
curriculum so changed as practically to make it that of a theological 
seminary. In the instructions issued to the director of morals, we 
read, "The aim of the Government in the education of students is 
the training up of faithful sons of the Orthodox Church, loyal sub- 
jects of the Tsar, good and useful servants of the fatherland. 
The soul of education and the supreme virtue of a citizen is humil- 
ity ; and therefore is the most important virtue in a student. . 
Students who distinguished themselves in the Christian virtues were 
to. be preferred before all others ..." (Quoted, Darlington, p. 
58.) The classics, science and history must agree with the teachings 
of scripture. Disobedient students were confined in cells and forced 
to wear cards with the inscription, 'sinner' upon them. The schools 
of the Jesuits numbered six in 1804. and had a great vogue with the 
upper classes, and owing to the liberality of the early years of the 
reign of Alexander were not disturbed. By 1812 the power of the 
Jesuits had increased sufficiently to procure the elevation of their 
college at Polotsk to a status equal to that of the Russian Univer- 
sities, and they were in a fair way to continuing their hitherto suc- 
cessful propaganda, when suspicion of political disaffection and the 
general reaction against foreign influences in Russia caused their 
expulsion. 

The results of Magnitsky's 'inquiry' at Kazan were extreme, 
but the same tendency was followed elsewhere, and the univer- 
sities accordingly became even less capable of directing the course 
of education and culture in Russia. Popular elementary education 
made little progress. Under Golitzin, an attempt was made to intro- 
duce the system of Lancaster, and in 1813, Dr. Joseph Hammel was 
sent to England, officially, to study the system. In 1814 the Tsar, 
himself, while in London, met William Allen, and became interested 
in his plans. During the next few years several Russian students 
were sent to Paris and to Borough Road to be trained sufficiently 
well to establish the system in their country on their return. In 1818- 
1819 Allen came to Russia and had several interviews with the Tsar 
and with other members of the Bureaucracy. Yet all that came of 
it were some few schools in the larger towns, some schools formed 
on that system on the estates of a few nobles of liberal tendencies, 
and Lancasterian schools for soldiers. It was proposed to replace 
all district and parish schools in Kazan district by those or the new 
type, but the proposal was never carried out. 

55 



Golitzin was succeeded by Admiral Shishkov in 1824, an ortho- 
dox Russian, whose general attitude was that which later came to 
be called "Slavophilism." His views on education (quoted by Dar- 
lington, pg. 63) set forth the main ideas which were to control the 
policies of the Ministry for the next era. "Learning without faith 
and without morality does not constitute national happiness. Learn- 
ing is as hurtful in a bad man as it is useful in a good man. 
To teach the whole people, or a disproportionate number of them, to 
read and write would do more harm than good. To instruct a 
farmer's son in rhetoric would be to make of him a bad and worth- 
less, if not a positively dangerous citizen. But instruction in the rules 
of conduct and in Christian virtues and good morals is necessary to 
everybody . . . ". (Kniazkov and Serbov, pgs. 161-198. Mil- 
ioukov, 69, vol. II, pgs. 329-346: Kornilov, vol. I, pgs. 55-.57, 68-70, 
89, 98-101, 111-113, 145, 172, 187-193, 200; Darhngton, pgs. 36-63; 
Source 3, Part I, chaps. I-VIII ; Part II, chaps. I-VII ; Part 
III, chap. II.) 



56 



CHAPTER VI. 

Nicholas I, 1825-1855 

Autocracy as a Principle; and the Results. 

Nicholas, the third son of Paul, had been brought up and edu- 
cated quite differently from his eldest brother, Alexander. He had 
been educated, under the direction of his mother, by a strict disciplin- 
arian, General Lamsdorf, and a French emigre, Du-Pouge, and all 
his instruction was intended to produce a hatred for the revolu- 
tionary and liberal ideas of Europe. In 1816, at the age of twenty, 
he toured through Russia, Western Europe and England. He came 
back from this hurried, superficial trip with an intensified hatred and 
disgust for popular government, and devoted himself to restoring 
discipline in the brigade of the Guards of which he was appointed 
commander. In 1817 he became a General and almost to the end 
of his reign he was, characteristically, interested in the question 
of 'discipline' in the army. In 1817 he married the Prussian Prin- 
cess Charlotte. 

The first business that occupied Nicholas was that of the De- 
cember Uprising, to which he devoted practically all his time and 
energy for six months, endeavoring both to punish all those con- 
cerned in it, and also to discover what just causes, if any, had led 
to the rebellion. The trials themselves were parodies of justice and 
the incarnation of autocratic despotism, but Nicholas clearly saw, 
beneath all the activity of the revolutionists, signs of real and jus- 
tified dissatisfaction and discontent. By his orders, a report was 
drawn up by an investigation committee, based on the testimony and 
written statements of the conspirators which Borovkov, the secre- 
tary, summarized, in part, as follows, "It is necessary to grant clear, 
positive laws ; to establish justice through fastest court proceedings ; 
to elevate the moral education of the clergy; . . . ; to resur- 
rect commerce and industry . . . ; to direct education in ac- 
cordance with the status of the pupils ; to improve the condition of 
the farmers ; to abolish the humiliating sale of men . . . ". 
(Quoted, Kornilov, vol. I, pg. 235.) Nicholas did not rate the De- 
cembrists as merely a body of youthful dreamers, he saw clearly 
that they had included men of experience and real ability, and he 

57 



planned to use their ideas and their statements in governing his 
country. , 

In 1826, Nicholas issued his Coronation Manifesto, and his 
principles became apparent. "Not by impertinent, destructive 
dreams (from below), but from above, are gradually perfected the 
statutes of the land, are corrected the faults, are rectified the abuses." 
(Quoted, Kornilov, vol. I. pg. 236.) This was an expression of the 
advice of Karamzin, the historian, who was the predominant in- 
fluence in the early years of Nicholas' reign, and who was a firm 
believer in the necessity of autocracy for Russia as the only condi- 
tion under which reforms could be brought about. Speransky, who 
had now outgrown his early idealism, was another trusted adviser, 
and, later, Uvarov, with his narrow educational creed of 'Orthodoxy, 
Autocracy and Nationalism'. Under the influence of such men as 
these the principle of Autocracy developed and grew year by year, 
becoming, finally pure unenlightened despotism. It was not that 
Nicholas and his advisers were opposed to reform, but the principles 
through which they wished to bring it about, 'from above', con- 
tained in themselves the ground of failure. 

The thirty year reign of Nicholas is marked by two points of 
division, the first of which came in 1831, the time of the July revolu- 
tion in France, and the Polish insurrection. The six years up to 
this period had seen the codification of the laws, endless projects 
for reform that led to nothing, the creation of the 'Third Section', 
or secret police, and some educational legislation. But the banish- 
ment of his friend, Charles X, from France and the fall of his sis- 
ter, the Queen of the Netherlands, followed by the insurrection of 
1831-2 in Poland led to the final abandonment of whatever ideas of 
liberality had still persisted. The rest of his reign is characterized by 
constant efiforts to subdue all tendencies toward revolutionary ideas 
both at home and abroad, and the Tsar sought a close alliance with 
Prussia and Austria to further this, basing his internal program on 
the doctrine of Uvarov, — 'Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationalism.' 

The problem of serfdom and the condition of the serfs was be- 
coming the most important of all the questions which troubled the 
country. The serf population was rapidly increasing, estates could 
not pay for the mode of life which had been adopted by the nobility, 
(some 50% of them had been mortgaged by 1843). and the reign of 
Nicholas saw nearly six hundred separate revolts of serfs in one or 
another 'part of the country, half of which had to be suppressed 
with the aid of troops. In view of all this, the idea of the liberation 
of the serfs was more frequently and more seriously considered than 
heretofore, but the consensus of opinion among the nobles was that, 

58 



while the serfs should be liberated, the ownership of the lands should 
remain with the nobility. In 1842 a law was published which per- 
mitted the owners to liberate serfs, but with the additional condition, 
not in the similar law of 1803, that the peasants be allowed to retain 
what land they had cultivated. With compromises of this sort the 
question was carried along to the next reign. 

Throughout the beginning of the reign of Nicholas, industry was 
developing. The number of factories increased, new industries, par- 
ticularly cotton, grew up, and free labor came more into use. Estate- 
factories, worked by serf labor, diminished in number, and kustarny, 
or home labor increased, competing, often quite successfully, with 
the factories. The government protected this home labor, as it aided 
the nobility in making a success of their estates and helped postpone 
the day of final settlement of the question of the freeing of the serfs. 
But nothing in the nature of an industrial revolution took place, or 
was to be seen in the immediate future. 

With the French revolution of 1848 and the restoration of a 
republic, Nicholas became, if possible, even more despotic and reac- 
tionary, the remaining years to 1855 constituting the third period of 
his reign. His Manifesto of that year was full of threats against the 
Western 'rebels', and he seems to have taken yet more seriously upon 
himself the role of 'protector of monarchies', and in particular, 
absolutism. He aided Austria, with troops, to put down the Hun- 
garian revolt, and demanded from Friedrich Wilhelm more rigorous 
treatment of the revolutionary elements in his kingdom, particularly 
in Prussian Poland. This renewed attitude of reaction was, as usual, 
immediately visible in the conduct of internal affairs, increased 
severity of censorship, increased vigilance in the observation of those 
who were 'suspect', still further limitation of education and the 
imposition of religious motives and studies, prohibition against trav- 
eling abroad, without personal permission of the Tsar, which was 
very rarely given, and the addition to the Civil Service Statute, giving 
the authorities the right to dismiss, without trial or explanation, any 
official considered 'unworthy'. 

Yet beneath it all the breakdown of Autocracy as a principle 
was being prepared. The iron discipline and severity in the army 
had made it a much admired and respected instrument of the Tsar ; 
at home and in Europe it was feared ; when all else was criticised, 
even the enemies of the government felt sincerely that, as an army, 
the Russian troops and officers were eminently worthy of praise and 
admiration. In 1853 the war with Turkey began, the fateful Crimean 
War, and the Russian machine, apart from the individual bravery 

59 



of officers and men, was shown to be criminally incompetent and 
hopelessly dishonest. The despised Turks fought successfully 
against the Russians, Russian ships had to be sunk in the harbor of 
Sevastopol, the fortress itself capitulated. Stores had been plun- 
dered, or never sent to the front, ammunition was wrong or missing, 
equipment was wanting, resources were exhausted, — the whole sys- 
tem proved to be a failure. 

Nicholas died in 1855, a year before the end of the War, but he 
lived to see the beginning of the popular and universal movement 
against his principles of reform and control 'from above'. It had 
become quite evident that nothing but an absolutely fundamental 
change in the whole policy of Tsardom could right the wrongs and 
delivery the country. Submission to the power of the throne van- 
ished with this clear proof of its incompetence ; writers in prose and 
verse vied with one another in picturing the discontent of the coun- 
try, and neither police nor censor could prevent the circulation of the 
revolutionary propaganda. "Stand forth, O Tsar", one of them 
reads, "before the judgment seat of God and history. Thou hast 
mercilessly trodden the truth under foot, thou hast oppressed liberty, 
and hast been the slave of thy own passions. . . . Sue for 
pardon, and seek counsel. Throw thyself into the arms of the 
People. There is no other salvation for thee." (Quoted, 
Zilliacus, pg. 33.) . ^^'ith such a condition within and without 
the country, even the author of it would, of necessity, have had to 
modify his policies or render his country up to anarchy; his son and 
heir was left with the problem to solve. (Kornilov, vol I, chaps. XIV- 
XVII, XIX. Kovalevsky, 101, chap. VII to pg. 192. Mavor, vol I, 
Book II. chap. IX, X ; vol. II, Book IV. chaps. I, III ; Beazley, Book 
III, chap. II; Zilliacus, chap. II.) 

Autocracy and Society. 

The immediate effect of the suppression of the Decembrist up- 
rising was the weakening of the power of the revolutionary circles. 
Those who were not either exiled or sentenced to death were, for 
the time being, silenced and without leaders. In the middle of the 
19th century, Herzen wrote, in memory of the earlier period, 
"Thirty years ago, Russia of the future existed exclusively among a 
few boys who had just passed their childhood . , . This new 
life vegetated as grass ... on the lips of a crater which has 
not yet cooled." (Kornilov, vol. I, pg. 283.) But as this generation 
grew Up it became split into two sections, — those who followed the 
current which had begun in the days of Catherine, the ideas of the 

60 



French Revolution, the inspiration of the Dekabrists, and those who 
followed the new stream, coming from Germany, the stream of 
German idealism. post-Kantian philosophy. Hegelianism. which had 
entered Russia during the first quarter of the century. By 1825 the 
adherents of the newer ideology were in the majority, and the uni- 
versity students of that period found that Hegel and Schelling 
formed the basis of the teachings of many of the better professors 
of science, history and literature. At Moscow University was a small 
group of men, destined to play an immense part in the intellectual 
development of Russia, — Belinsky, Aksakov, Bakunin, Granovsky 
and Herzen. By the beginning of the 'forties two tendencies in 
radical thought were apparent, — Westerners, such as Herzen, Ba- 
kunin and Belinsky, and the idealistic Slavophils, such as Aksakov 
and Kireievsky, and it was unfortunately true, so far as progress 
against a common enemy was concerned, that they orten hindered 
and quarreled with each other. 

Against all such activity as this Nicholas was, from the very 
beginning of his reign, most vigilant. In addition to the ordinary 
censor, he established, as early as 1828, three others, and official 
circulars were frequently issued which forbade all mention of this 
or that occurrence or episode at home or abroad, — 'for official rea- 
sons'. Foreign books and newspapers were forbidden entrance, un- 
less of the most innocent character, that is, not dealing, in the slight- 
est degree with politics. But in spite of the most excessive precau- 
tions, the spread of ideas continued both by word of mouth, in the 
numerous secret meetings, and through the publications, openly is- 
sued in Russia, in which forbidden thoughts were carefully con- 
cealed to all but the initiate, in chosen words and phrases, and 
through other publications such as Herzen's 'Kolokol' (The Bell), 
published monthly in London, and smuggled into Russia and there 
secretly circulated. That this secrecy on the part of writers against 
the existing state of affairs was justified, is evident from the treat- 
ment given to one thinker who did speak out and publish his opinion 
on matters theoretically wholely within the domain of the Tsar, — 
Chaadaiev. In 1836, Chaadaiev published in the "Telescope." a philo- 
sophical magazine edited by Professor Nadezhdin of Moscow Uni- 
versity, a "Philosophical Letter". In it he not so much criticised 
Russian afi'airs, as voiced a hopeless despair at the past, the present 
and the future of Russia, — "We live in indifference to all, in a nar- 
row horizon, with no past or future ..." For Russia to 
become like other nations she must "begin over again the whole 
education of man ..." (Quoted, Kornilov, vol I, pg. 287.) 
The magazine was suppressed, the editor exiled, the censor who per- 

61 



mitted the letter to be passed was dismissed, and ChaaJaiev was of- 
ficially declared insane, and reports of his condition, at stated inter- 
vals, ordered to be delivered to the Tsar. With the events of 1848, 
the repression of the police became, if possible, even more stringent, 
and a small circle of literary men and officers, who met simply to 
discuss literature were sentenced to death. — among them the young 
Dostoevsky. The government was simply striking in all directions, 
blindly and in terror of what it could not find. 

It is little wonder, then, that the defeats of the Crimean War 
met with rejoicing on the part even of staunch patriots. Sevastopol 
fell that "God might reveal all the rottenness of the system of gov- 
ernment, all the results of the principle of 'throttle'." (Aksakov) ; 
"We were convinced that defeat would be more endurable and more 
beneficial for Russia than the conditions under which we were liv- 
ing," (Koshelev) ; "We have fallen, not before the forces of the 
Western Alliance, but as a result of our own internal weakness," 
(Samarin). Quoted. Beazley, pgs. 423-424; Kornilov, vol. I, chaps. 
XVIII, XIX. Zilliacus, chap. II. Mavor, vol. I, Book II, chaps. 
IX, X; Ivanov-Razunmik, vol. I, chaps. VI-VIII.) 

Autocracy, and Education as 'Discipline'. 

The lesson of December, 1825, was apparently never forgotten 
by Nicholas, but it would seem that his efiforts, not only in the gen- 
eral afifairs of his country, but in education, were directed rather to 
reproduce such occurrences than to remove the causes. What little 
promise there had been in the theories of Catherine and the early 
liberality of Alexander for the eventual development of a universal, 
free and approximately democratic system of education was com- 
pletely thwarted, for a long time to come, by the new ideas and 
methods of Nicholas. 

Some six months after his accession he appointed Shishkov as 
president of a committee for the organization of educational insti- 
tutions, whose task was the introduction of uniformity of adminis- 
tration and methods, and a vigilant supervision of texts and note- 
books. He was particularly adverse to the educational system of 
1804, condemning it as too difuse, too superficial, and ordering the 
creation of a curriculum that would be concentrated, that would aim 
at character as well as knowledge, — and in particular, of the kind 
he considered supreme, an obedient, loyal, 'disciplined', conservative 
character. Another of his personal demands was the abolishing of 
the continuity between the various steps in the school system, where- 
by those of the lower classes had been enabled to advance to the very 

62 



summit of the system. Believing that moral and social harm was 
done by educating the children of all ranks in the same schools, he 
ordered that, while children of the peasants and lower classes might 
be admitted to parish and district schools, the gymnasia and univer- 
sities and other institutions of higher rank must be reserved ex- 
clusively for those of 'svobodnyia sostoianniia', or 'free orders of so- 
ciety'. The investigations of the Committee extended over a period 
of two and a half years, and their findings were promulgated in the 
Statutes and Regulations of 1828-1835, the main points of which may 
be summarized as follows : In the first place, the instructions of the 
Emperor concerning the right of entry into educational institutions, 
was embodied in the regulations, and gymnasia and universities were 
definitely reserved to the nobility and the officials, the parish and 
district schools being particularly intended for the education of 
others, — the latter, "to afiford the children of tradesmen, artisans, and 
other town-dwellers,. . . such instruction as would be most 
useful to them, having regard to their manner of life and their special 
needs and customs." As the Committee expressed it, "... a 
public system of education should aim at securing for the children 
of each class such a training as would fit them to be useful and con- 
tented in that rank of life to which it had pleased a Most High 
Providence to call them at their birth, ..." (Quoted, Dar- 
lington, pg. 67.) In the second place, the class and political aims of 
education at this period were fully developed, and the formula of 
Uvarov, Minister from 1833-1849, so literally accepted and followed 
that the schools under its domination became a mere department of 
internal affairs. In an investigation of the University of Moscow, 
before he became Minister, Uvarov wrote, "I firmly believe we shall 
be able to avoid these mistakes, (i. e., the pernicious influence of 
Western European ideas), and shall succeed. in gradually capturing 
the minds of the youth and bringing them to that point where there 
must merge together — a regulated, fundamental education with a 
deep conviction and warm belief in the true-Russian conservative 
principles of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationalism, which pre- 
sent the last cirichor cf our salvation and the surest pledge of the 
strength and majesty of our country", and advocated "the multi- 
plication of mental dikes for the struggle with destructive notions". 
He declared when Minister that he wished to prolong Russia's youth 
and would die happy if he could hold back the development of the 
country for about half a century. (Quoted, Kornilov, vol. I, pgs. 
280-281.) This efifort of the State to control education in its own 
interests led, naturally to a stricter control over private educational 

63 



institutions, and the limitation of the right to travel or to be edu- 
cated abroad. 

The universities, too, came under new regulations, embodied in 
the Statute of 1835, by Uvarov. The Dekabrist Uprising had re- 
sulted in a degeneration of the universities, for many of the pro- 
fessors and other university officials had been implicated in the re- 
bellion, and the temporary measures to relieve the situation, even the 
sending of students to study abroad and so meet the requirements for 
the various chairs in the universities, had not resulted in entire suc- 
cess. To prevent the universities from again becoming centers of 
revolutionary disturbances, their autonomy was taken away and 
they were deprived of all control over other parts of the educational 
system. 

The most severe expression, however, of autocracy in 
education came after the events of 1848, when university students 
were required to wear a special uniform and follow certain regu- 
lations when appearing in public, courses in European public law, 
comparative constitutional law. social statistics, were abolished, and 
philosophy and psychology might be taught only by orthodox 
(Greek) professors of theology and strictly in accordance with the 
creed of the church. Professors were required to submit to the gov- 
ernment the actual lectures which they intended to give as well as the 
lists for further reading on the part of students, and deans were re- 
quired to report the smallest deviations from the approved copies of 
lectures. Tuition fees were raised, inspectors of morals appointed 
for each school, text-books limited, the gymnasium course extended 
to seven and that of the district schools to five years, all with the 
intention of making the task of obtaining an education and, in case 
of beginning it the attainment of 'chin', as difficult as possible for all 
those not possessed of wealth and rank. One further effort to 
strengthen the bond between the members of the nobility and to in- 
tensify the distinctions of class was the introduction of boarding 
houses for the gymnasia, to which access was denied to all but those 
students whose parents belonged to the eighth or higher ranks of the 
nobility. This was also a part of the general efifort to make the state 
institutions in every respect as attractive as the better private board- 
ing schools, and in 1833 the establishment of new private boarding 
schools in either Moscow or St. Petersburg was forbidden, and the 
right to open such, anywhere, granted only to Russian subjects if, in 
addition, it could be shown that the facilities ofifered by the state in the 
place in question were inadequate. Later regulations were still stricter. 

In March, 1849, six months before he resigned, Uvarov re- 
versed his policy in the question of the classics for the secondary 

64 



schools. It seemed to the government at this time, in contrast to 
earher and also later opinions, that the study of the classics was 
dangerous, and tended to undermine the loyalty to the doctrines of 
Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationalism. This, of course, was a 
reflection of the events of 1848, and the current official view-point 
was that the study of the classics "encouraged republican senti- 
ments." The course of the gymnasium was divided into two parts, — 
a "general," and a "special," the latter commencing with the fourth 
class, and permitting specialization in law, mathematics or the clas- 
sics, according to the future career of the student. Latin was re- 
quired only for entrance to the universities, and Greek only for the 
pursuit of philology. Naturally this disorganized the whole sec- 
ondary system, and the reasoning behind it should be compared with 
that of the period of the "restoration" of the classics in 1871. 

The general attitude of autocracy in education was reflected in 
the treatment of the question of primary education, particularly in 
the rural districts. Practically nothing was done by the Ministry of 
Public Enlightenment, and the one movement which stands out in 
the whole of Nicholas' reign is that of the Ministry of Imperial Do- 
mains, which began to establish, after 1830, village schools for peas- 
ants with the purpose of training clerks for the work of rural ad- 
ministration. By 1853 there were some 3,000 of these schools with 
an average of 50 pupils. There also existed so-called "skholy 
gramoty," or reading and writing schools which were not official, 
but which did considerable toward diminishing the illiteracy of the 
rural population. Parish schools of the Ministry of Education also 
existed, but the attention and care of the Ministry was not directed 
to them. 

But, in spite of restrictions and the imposition of principles 
directed rather to the furtherance of political power than the wel- 
fare of the schools, education and culture made considerable prog- 
ress in the reign of Nicholas. This may be attributed to several 
factors : first, the turning of attention inward to the country and 
its problems, resulting in a study of its history, its ancient culture, 
its language and its institutions, to an extent hitherto not equalled ; 
secondly, the impossibility of further imitation of contemporary 
European institutions and ideology, and the consequent maturing 
of previously imported doctrines and the spontaneous development 
of characteristically Russian attitudes ; thirdly, the severe and con- 
centrated study of what the curricula of the various schools did 
permit; fourthly, and of the greatest significance, the fact of a 
vast increase of eminently superior thinkers in the country, re- 
sulting in what has been called the Renaissance of the Forties, a 

65 



movement which was embodied in writings of history, law, phil- 
osophy, science and literature, and of which the University of Mos- 
cow was the center, creating 'for herself a place in the intellectual 
history of the country which she has never entirely lost. It was 
this which gave such impetus to study and to the ideal of obtaining 
an education, that regulations were almost of no avail to those who 
had seriously determined to obtain it, and so alarmed the govern- 
ment that the already strict rules of the early period of Nicholas' 
reign were still further modified to restrain the movement toward 
the gymnasia and universities. It is in this stimulus to education 
that we find the beginning of the later movement, of the 'sixties, 
for the spread of elementary schools. The restrictions of 1848 and 
later were but a temporary interruption of this growth. (Kornilov, 
vol. I, chaps. XV, XVIil, XIX; Milioukov, 69, vol. II, pp. 346- 
356; Kniazkov and Serbov, pp. 199-237; Darlington, pp. 63-86; 
Source 3, part III, chaps. II-VII ; part IV, chaps. II-VIII.) 



66 



CHAPTER VII. 
Alexander II, 1855-1881 

The Great Reforms and Subsequent Reaction. 

It is a curious fact that the chief rulers considered up to this 
time should have had, each of them, a period of reform and con- 
struction, and a period of reaction ; Alexander II differed, in this 
respect, not at all from Catherine, Alexander I and Nicholas I. 
Of all the outstanding rulers of Russia Peter alone seems to have 
persevered in his creative work to the end of his reign. The div- 
iding year with Alexander II was 1866, the year of the first at- 
tempt on his life, though symptoms of reaction appear earlier, in 
1861. ^ 

The failure of Russian arms in the Crimean War roused the 
general public from the depression and fear which had controlled 
it since the excessive reaction of the period of 1848. Interest in 
public afifairs revived, and it was quite apparent to all that only 
vast changes in the management of the country could prevent gen- 
eral and widespread disorder. The censorship which had prevailed 
up to the death of Nicholas had not prevented the circulation of 
manuscript copies of treasonable material, and in them the system 
of the late Tsar was as mercilessly criticized as in the public hand- 
bills which appeared after the defeat. Pogodin's "Political Let- 
ters" are a good example of the criticism which circulated in in- 
tellectual circles. "The Emperor, charmed by the brilliant reports 
(of his ministers) has no real knowledge of the condition of Rus- 
sia. . . . All the ways through which thought might find expres- 
sion have been closed. The officials think only of how to gain the 
good will of their superior, . . . They form one friendly, secret, 
masonic society . . . They regard every thinking man as an 
enemy . . ." (Quoted, Beazley, pp. 424-425.) 

Alexander II had been a warm admirer of the policies of 
his father, who had kept him busy and trained him thoroughly in 
the afifairs of state, but he had seen the breakdown of the system 
in the years of the war, when even Nicholas had begun to lose 
faith. The death of his father left Alexander with an enormous 
and heroic task, and one that required immediate attention and 

67 



prompt measures of relief. The first few months of his reign the 
war still demanded every attention and when peace was concluded, 
Prince Gorchakov wrote to the emperor. — "It is fortunate that we 
have made peace, for we could have fought no longer." As a pre- 
liminary relief, before the consideration of the means to more ex- 
tensive reforms, the censorship was lightened, prohibition against 
foreign travel removed, the position of the universities bettered, 
and some of the restrictions on the students removed. In 1856 
Alexander gave the first intimation of the direction of his first re- 
forms in addressing the nobles of Moscow, and opened up the whole 
question of the liberation of the serfs, a matter that was to occupy 
much of his time in his reign, and was to lead to a whole new set 
of problems. "It is better," he said, "to begin the abolition of serf- 
dom from above, than to wait until it begins to abolish itself from 
below," and asked the nobles "to think how this may be accom- 
plished." (Quoted, Beazley, p. 426.) This came as a surprise, but 
it seemed to Alexander that this question must be settled before 
any other. 

In response to this request for advice the nobility simply waited 
for the government again to take the initiative, though they realized 
that the end of serfdom was at hand. The question was. What would 
be the conditions of the emancipation? There were two clearly dif- 
ferent situations, which demanded, the nobles believed, entirely dif- 
ferent settlement of the question. In the fertile provinces of the 
center and south of Russia, where the nobles derived their income 
from the land by the unpaid labor of the serfs, they were willing to 
liberate them without payment, for the freed peasants would have, 
of necessity, to work for the nobles, who held it a requisite part of 
the reform that they themselves retain the ownership of the land. 
North of Moscow an entirely different situation obtained, for the 
land was not profitable to work in face of the competition from the 
south, and the income of the nobility was derived more from the pay- 
ments made by the peasants for permission to work in the factories 
of the towns, than from agriculture. These landowners, consequently, 
demanded that the peasants pay for their freedom, but were, on the 
other hand, willing to give up some of their land. To satisfy both 
these camps required a compromise. 

In March. 1861. the Act of Emancipation was published. All 
the peasants were allowed 'perpetual possession' of some land, pay- 
ing yearly dues for the use of it. By agreement with the original 
landowners they could come to own it outright, paying a sum, ad- 
vanced by the Government, the so-called "redemption' payments,' 

68 



equal to the use-^rent for 16 and 2-3 years. The amount of land as- 
signed to each "household" or peasant varied in the different districts, 
and in most cases was smaller than that which they had worked for 
themselves, as serfs. In order therefore to pay their taxes, they had 
to rent more land, or labor for the old owners or follow some other 
occupation than agriculture. Thus the act of 1861 contained many 
unsolved problems. 

One of the first questions which arose was that of local govern- 
ment, and the law of 1864 endeavored to solve it. The management 
of local affairs for each district was entrusted to a council elected 
by the local inhabitants, and while the original plan had been to 
unite all classes of each district into one electoral body without dis- 
tinctions of class, the beginning of the wave of reform and conserv- 
atism was able so to modify this that property became the basis of 
the new institution. The large landowners became more largely 
represented than the peasants, but were not able to obtain an absolute 
preponderance. Each district had its own council or Zemstvo con- 
stantly in session, and the activities of the Zemstvos in a 
given province were to be co-ordinated by a Provincial Council. 
Both districts and provinces varied enormously in size, and no 
smaller unit than the district was provided. The duties of the 
Zemstvos were to keep up the roads, provide for famine relief, 
maintain existing elementary schools, hospitals and similar institu- 
tions and supervise agricultural matters. 

Among the reforms one of the most efficient was that of the 
law. Proceedings in the courts were made public, and the ancient 
rules of procedure were replaced with the modern system of prose- 
cution and defense, and trial by jury for all but political cases and 
certain offenses by officials was introduced. This constituted one of 
the most radical reforms, but suffered with the rest of the new 
ideas when the era of reaction came. 

The attempt on the life of Alexander in 1866 intensified the 
reaction which had shown itself in '64, in connection with the stamp- 
ing out of the Polish rebellion of that year, and its force was at once 
directed against all that had hitherto been shown a measure of free- 
dom. Education, in particular, suffered. The presidents of the 
Zemstvos were made responsible, in 1867,. for the prevention even 
of mere discussion on subjects beyond their control, reports of their 
activities were subject to the censorship of the government, and they 
were not allowed to publish accounts of the different works they 
were engaged in. The right of the public to attend their meetings 
was curtailed. The courts suffered, also, and the appointment of 
judges was tampered with. A new type of censorship, in addition 

69 



to the old prohibitive system was introduced, and the so-called "pun- 
itive censorship" made editors responsible, after publication, for 
anything and everything which the official in charge wished to con- 
strue as contrary to the best interests of the autocracy. Public 
opinion began, once more, to reach that condition in which it had 
been at the beginning of the Crimean War. 

The inevitable result of all this repression, particularly after 
many and sincere promises and shows of reform, was the building up 
again of active resistance in those of the population who had both 
education and initiative, and the courage and wit to use it. The 
following section will trace the evolution of the new liberal tenden- 
cies as well as that of the more bitter and more physically active rev- 
olutionists, whose activity led, eventually, to the assassination of the 
Tsar, in March, 1881, on the afternoon of the same day on which he 
had earlier approved a new series of reforms, advocated by the 
Minister of the Interior, Loris-Melilsov. (Kornilov. vol. II, chaps. 
XX-XXII, XXVI, XXXII-XXXIV, XXXVI. XXXVII. Kovalevsky 
101, chaps. VII-IX. Mavor, vol. I, Book II, chaps. XII, XIII; 
Book III, chaps. V, VI; vol. II, Book IV, chaps. IV-VII.) 

Growth of Organised Social Thought and Action. 

With the initiation of the reforms of the earHer period of the 
reign of Alexander II, there also began a development of social and 
political evolution that not even the reaction of the later period could 
entirely check. These reforms, giving a new freedom and a new 
self-government to the millions of serfs, who necessarily had to 
have some education, and who, obtaining that education, were in a 
position to demand and help in obtaining still greater opportunities, 
together with the new legal system, created a new social Russia. The 
nobility, too, rather inconsistently displeased with the action of the 
government in freeing the serfs, though it had asked and waited for 
suggestions from the nobles, were exhibiting bitterness and dissatis- 
faction. The class interest of the nobility as distinct from that of 
the government itself was growing, but this purely oligarchical ten- 
dency was balanced by a more generous and liberal expression of a 
part of them, who identified themselves with society as a whole and 
demanded still further universal, liberal reforms. These were the 
so-called "kayushchisya dvoryane." or "conscience-stricken gen- 
try". A third group of social workers was that of the younger gen- 
eration of the educated "raznochintsy", or men of mixed classes, 
more democratic and somewhat distrustful of the "liberal" ideas of 
the second group of nobles. 

70 



Radical opinion was growing and, no longer confining itself to 
small groups of officers and secret societies, small in numbers, began 
the effort to educate the public, and to win converts on the basis 
of a definite program of criticism and reform. Reform "from 
above" began to seem endlessly long in coming, and inadequate 
when it did come. Members of all classes seemed motivated by a 
sincere desire to advance the well-being of everybody else. "In the 
years 1860-1865 a bitter dispute was being fought out in nearly all 
well-to-do families between parents and their sons and daughters, 
who claimed the right to determine their life according to their own 
ideals and aspirations. . . . After a hard and bitter struggle 
many of them gained their personal independence, and desired to use 
it, not for their personal convenience, but for the purpose of spread- 
ing among the people that knowledge by which they had secured 
their own freedom." (Kropotkin, p. 301.) Radical opinion, more- 
over, was acquiring a philosophy. Chernishevsky, Dobrolyubov, 
Pisarev, so-called "critics," were fashioning a social philosophy 
which was to have a far reaching effect on their own and succeeding 
generations. Pisarev carried the principle of "emancipation" to a 
conclusion which was literally what it was, in the phrase of the day, 
called, '"^Nihilism", demanding the freeing of the human mind from 
all religious, moral, and intellectual bonds, from all traditions, 
whether of family, of ideals or of conduct. This was philosophy, 
and a doctrine of thought and words, but the "doctrine of the deed" 
was to follow and to put literally into effect the teaching of the 
critics. In 1861 active revolutionary groups were organized, some 
of them advocating immediate social revolution, others the preparing 
of the ground for the time when revolution must inevitably come, 
of itself. The circulation of revolutionary proclamations, broad- 
cast, in 1861, and a series of incendiary fires in St. Petersburg in 
1862 brought on action by the government against the growing 
movement. The "Sovremennik" (Contemporary) of Chernishevsky 
and the "Russkoe Slovo" (Russian Word) of Pisarev were sus- 
pended from publication for eight months, and Chernishevsky sen- 
tenced to fourteen years in Siberia. These activities and the Polish 
rebellion of 1863-1864, which the government held revolutionaries 
responsible for, did much to discredit their activities, and the attempt 
of 1866 on the life of the Emperor was met, on the one hand, by in- 
creased vigilance of the state and, on the other hand, by a movement 
against revolution, on the part of the "liberals". The radical jour- 
nals were entirely suppressed and numerous changes made in min- 
isterial posts in favor of the reactionary party. 

71 



But new leaders and a new movement sprang up among the 
radical element. Lavrov and Mikhailovsky took the place of Cher- 
nishevsky and Pisarev and the personal element of the earlier teach- 
ing became combined with a social element that was more construct- 
ive. The new basis of progress was to be the physical, moral and 
intellectual development of the individual and the embodiment of 
truth and justice in social rather than political forms. The minority 
who were already cultured were to become a force to bring enlight- 
enment to the uncultured majority. Again, a group ready to put 
such doctrines into immediate practice sprang up. of which Bakunin 
was the leader, who added to this teaching the additional doctrine 
that such a cultural emancipation for society could take place only 
with the complete destruction of the authority of the state, by means 
of a social revolution. So, by another road, the revolutionists were 
back to the same conclusion. But all the revolutionary groups were 
in agreement that- to advance the interests of the "people", it was 
necessary to "go in among them". Thus arose the "v narod", or "the 
going among the people" movement, and early in the year 1874 large 
numbers of young men and women went out into the rural districts 
and lived among the actual peasantry, endeavoring to teach them the 
principles which had actuated their own thoughts and feelings. The 
movement which started with the idea and the hope of thus finding a 
new source for the materialization of th^ necessary force for the 
overturning of society ended disastrously, for the revolutionists 
were quite misunderstood by the peasants, to whom the abstract 
ideas of the propaganda meant little or nothing. Furthermore, 
the revolutionists were easily followed by police agents, aided, at 
times, by the very peasants whom the workers were endeavoring 
to "save". One outstanding gain was made by the workers in this 
movement, — they saw clearly that the peasant, whose one hope and 
desire was "land, and more land", could only be reached by a much 
more definite and concrete appeal. The revolutionists, in other 
words, began to see what the real needs of society were, as opposed 
to the abstract formulation of a philosophical creed, suitable only to 
the "cultivated minority". 

As a first move in a new direction, the "Land and Liberty" so- 
ciety was formed, in 1876, the very definite aim of which was the 
attraction of the peasant class by arousing in them the hope of a 
new distribution of land. This question continues to t)e an import- 
ant factor in all revolutionary activity to the present time. The two 
currents constantly seen in Russian social movements, were in evi- 
dence here, and the society broke up into an "active", terrorizing 
group, and a group that continued to appeal to propaganda, and 

72 



which once more "went in among the people". In 1879, the separate 
divisions of the Land and Liberty Society became known as the 
"Black Partition" (peaceful propagandists), and the "Will of the 
People" (active terrorists). Public opinion again leaned to the side 
of the revolutionists, in view of the increased severity and reaction of 
the government, and the nucleus of this new public expression em- 
bodied itself in the Zemstvos, to which the government appealed for 
aid against the revolutionists. The Zemstvos, with few exceptions, 
showed a new spirit of revolt, replying to the requests of the gov- 
ernment with such phrases as, "society could only struggle against 
subversive ideas, if it possessed the necessary weapons, freedom of 
speech, of opinion, and of the press". About 1879, an organization 
of Zemstvo leaders, called the "Zemstvo Union" met with some of 
the revolutionary leaders and asked for a cessation of active terror- 
ism, to give the government an opportunity to introduce its promised 
reforms, but the government failed to live up to the hopes and expec- 
tations of the time. Consequently, there was a revival of the most 
extreme acts of terrorism, culminating in the assassination of the 
Emperor. (Kornilov, vol. II, chaps. XXIII - XXV, XXXV. 
XXXVI. Mavor, vol. I, Book II, chap. IX ; vol. II, Book IV, chaps. 
IV-VII. Zilliacus, chaps. III-VI. Ivanov-Razumnik, vol. I, chap. 
VIII, vol. II, chaps. MIL) 

Education, Society and Alexander. 

Education shared in the reforms that so strongly characterized 
the early years of Alexander's reign, and co-incident with this new 
freedom there arose a pedagogic literature of criticism and construc- 
tion. Pirgov's "Voprosy Zhizni" (Questions of Life) is an example, 
appearing in 1856 and presenting the thesis that the object of edu- 
cation is to make men, not to prepare students for special callings. 
This was, of course, in direct contradiction to the doctrine of autoc- 
racy, that education was to make good followers of Orthodoxy, 
Autocracy and Nationalism, for all three of these terms have latent 
within them the idea of "each to his class and his calling". To the 
Russians who believed that the primary schools were mere efficiency 
i^istitutions to give the required minimum of literacy to the lower 
classes, and the secondary and higher institutions mere avenues to 
state employment, this was an entirely new way of looking at the 
matter. General literary magazines began to give space to educa- 
tional articles and several distinctly educational journals appeared, 
such as the "Zhurnal dlia Vospitaniia/' (Journal of Education), the 
"Uchitel" (Teacher) and the "Pedagogicheskii Sbornik" (Peda- 

73 



gogical Collection), all of which played an important part under the 
new freedom of the press in enlightening the public on educational 
matters as seen from another angle than that of the state. Under 
the general impetus of reform all branches of education made 
progress, private schools, Sunday schools, universities, schools for 
girls and public lectures. 

The freeing of the serfs was, in itself, a fact to give rise to 
immense planning along educational lines. Now that these millions 
of men and women were free, and were to have some measure of 
self government, it could hardly be expected that they would assume 
their new responsibilities without some measure of guidance, and 
the new generation, that was to be born and grow up free, could not 
be left in the same condition of ignorance as had been their fathers 
and mothers. Slavophiles and Westerners agreed in this matter, 
however much they differed in other respects regarding the nature 
and function of the serf in Russian history, and there was some talk 
of introducing a compulsary system such as that of Germany. The 
newly freed serfs, too, took their position seriously, and had every 
desire to fulfill the demands of their new situation in society. 

The economic eft'ects of the freeing of the serfs reacted, in 
many instances on the nobility, particularly on the poorer among 
them. Many found themselves under the necessity of so educating 
their sons and daughters that they might be able to earn their living, 
and hence the demand for higher education for men and women 
rose rapidly. And with the freeing of the serfs restriction was, 
theoretically at least, removed from the boy or girl of lower social 
rank who aspired to rise in educational circles and in the service of 
the state. The resulting unprecedented influx into institutions of 
all kinds led to a greater increase in available candidates for posts 
in the civil service than the demand. The freedom of labor to move 
from one point to another initiated an era of development of natural 
resources, and this, in turn, to a demand for technical and profes- 
sional education that has lasted to the present day. 

The reactionary wave, however, followed so closely on the ear 
of reform, that the former began almost before the reforms were 
expressed in laws and statutes. The Polish rebellion, of 1861, was 
in part the cause of the change, for it seemed, at that time, that the 
youth of the universities had been instrumental in helping the Poles, 
and in spreading revolutionary doctrines. The University of St. 
Petersburg was temporarily closed in 1861. This whole movement 
of reform and reaction existing side by side was the reflection of the 
conflicting ideals of two generations, — the old and the new. Tur- 
geniev, in his novel, "Fathers and Sons" has pictured this differ- 

74 



ence within the society of. the period, a difference which grew with 
time, and which inevitably attracted to one side or the other all those 
active in social affairs. But the university reforms of '63 and the 
primary schools reforms of '64 were enacted before the full force 
of reaction had been brought to bear. 

Dmitri Tolstoy, the reactionary minister, came to office in 1866. 
Previous to his accession, educational policy had been guided, to an 
unprecedented extent for Russia, by public opinion, and laws of a 
very liberal nature had been framed. The universities were one 
of the first institutions to receive attention. Since the middle of 
the preceding reign the universities had fallen below even the Rus- 
sian standard, and in comparison with those of Western Europe 
they were quite evidently inferior. This condition was due to the 
lack of sufficient good teachers from Russian sources, the prohibition 
against inviting foreign instructors, the lowness of salaries, the dif- 
ficulty of the examinations for the necessary higher degrees, the 
complexity and consequent superficiality with which the course of 
study was followed in the universities, the defective preparation 
afforded by the gymnasia in Latin and modern languages, which 
were necessary for adequate work in the universities, and finally 
the poverty of the universities and the indifference of the public of 
the period preceding the reforms. Vacancies in some chairs, unsatis- 
factory incumbents of others, disorders on the part of the students 
were the outward signs of this unsatisfactory condition. The reform 
of '63 was framed as early as '58 and then given long and serious 
examination before being put into effect, so that when it was 
promulgated, the reaction of the "fathers" and the state had al- 
ready begun. The same policy was followed in the reforms of the 
primary system, to be considered next, so that for the first time the 
reforms really represented, to some degree, public feeling and be- 
liefs. The reforms aimed at greater self-government of the univer- 
sities and consequently placed the authority in the Council of the 
University ; and a University Court, for th etrial of students in con- 
nection with university order, was established, consisting of three 
professors. Details of instruction, and decisions concerning the 
granting of degrees, bursaries, and remission of fees were also 
vested in the Council. A new class of university lectures, Privat- 
Docents, was created, in order to afford a supply of professors, sal- 
aries were raised, though not quite in the proportion in which the 
cost of living, due to the greater development and complexity of 
Russian life, had risen, the number of chairs was increased and 
the material equipment of libraries, museums and laboratories was 
financed. Admission to the Universities was now made dependent 



on a leaving certificate, the "attestat zrelosti", from the secondary 
school of the candidate, instead of on an admission examination of 
the university. A move to admit women "auditors" was defeated 
at this time. Governing the whole scheme of reform was a new 
definition of the purpose of the universities. — contrasting greatly 
with that of the regulations of 1804 and 1835. Where the former 
had considered the universities as a branch of the system for prep- 
aration for civil service in the interests of the state, the new attitude 
emphasized "learning for its own sake" and strove to make the uni- 
versities centers of research and scholarship. This was not yet in 
accord with the idea of the "critics" that only social service justified 
the possession of education, but it was nearer than the old conception 
had been. The system of "chin" or rank as a means of attracting 
students and rewarding those who were successful was criticised, 
but not done away with, for reasons of immediate expediency. We 
shall see that the first acts of Tolstoy were directed toward the nulli- 
fication of many of these principles and privileges. 

In 1858, Kovalevsky, as Minister of Education, began the fram- 
ing of reforms for both primary and secondary education, and in 
'62 a special committee, formed of representatives from all the Min- 
istries which had any control over elementary schools, was created, 
to consider means of co-ordinating all such schools under the Min- 
istry of Public Education. Both schemes of reform were printed 
in the languages of W^estern Europe and sent abroad for criticism. 
In the meantime many elementary schools had been opened, under 
the Ministry of the Interior, in rural districts, and the Holy Synod 
had also been very active in opening parish schools while private 
initiative had partaken in the movement to educate the lower classes 
with considerable success. Leo Tolstoy's school at Yasnaia Poliana, 
his own estate, had been a great success and the source of his peda- 
gogical principles as expressed in his Essays on Pedagogy. As a re- 
sult of this activity and the increased attendance at higher institu- 
tions, it has been estimated that one out of each one hundred and 
seventy of the population of the middle of the 19th century were 
receiving some education. This does not take into account the 
"reading and writing" schools of irregular and illegal existence, 
which were established by unqualified and poorly educated private 
individuals in practically every village. 

The question arose, in connection with the reforms, whether it 
were advisable to have the Holy Synod, rather than the Minister of 
Public Instruction control the elementary schools, a question which 
had arisen before and was to remain a subject of constant discus- 
sion. As a solution of the matter, while all schools at that time in 

76 



the charge of the Holy Synod were allowed to remain so, it was 
ordered that the Minister of Public Education should establish 
schools throughout the Empire, which should remain under his 
charge, and that the two Ministries should co-operate as far as pos- 
sible. This co-operation, in fact, has not been very great. Another 
question was whether the elementary schools should be made com- 
pulsory. The diiierent systems of Prussia, France and England 
were considered ; that of Prussia, requiring attendance between def- 
inite ages for all children, was considered impossible for the Russia 
of that period, both because of expense, lack of sufficient teachers, 
wide distribution of the rural inhabitants and the poverty of the 
peasants ; that of France, requiring the establishment of schools by 
each commune, was also rejected, for much the same reasons ; that 
of England, somewhat modified, was finally adopted, and the Gov- 
ernment contented itself with compelling nothing, but establishing 
model schools and encouraging private enterprise, and even subsi- 
dizing them, in case of necessity. This satisfied the demand for a 
share in the field of education on the part of private and social inter- 
ests. But it was a strange reflection of the backwardness of the 
whole movement of education in Russia, that this element of private 
initiative came into the system at a time when other countries, after 
trying it, had come to the decision that it was. not satisfactory and 
when even England, the country imitated, was gradually coming 
to the same conclusion. 

Another question debated at length was that of the relative 
control of the local Zemstvos and the Ministry of Education. Ko- 
valevsky favored the Zemstvos, and reflected the advanced opinion 
of the time, but the decision was finally reached to limit the power of 
the Zemstovos to the provision and maintenance of schools, the Min- 
istry to administer and control them. The curriculum of the primary 
school was defined to consist of Religion and the three R's, together 
with church singing, if it was possible to provide it. No distinction 
of faith or rank, or of sex, if separate schools could not be provided, 
was to prevent entrance to these schools, and the question of fees 
was left to the decision of the Zemstvo providing the school. But 
these advances, as we shall see, were greatly modified by Tolstoy 
upon his accession. 

The dispute of 1849- .51 concerning the value and place of the 
classics in the secondary schools had left them with a curriculum 
which satisfied neither side, — the schools became neither "classical" 
nor yet "real" in a definite sense. So the same dispute came up 
again in connection with the complete reforming of the schools 
which took place in this first portion of the reign of the second 

77 



Alexander. Opinion was now quite in favor of the non-classical 
schools and had not yet come to see that both types might be estab- 
lished and maintained at the same time. But the Ministry had come 
to see this as a wise plan and so, after many revisions, the 1864 
Statute regarding secondary schools created three types, a Latin- 
Gymnasium, a Latin-Greek-'Gymnasium and a non-classical Gymna- 
sium. Lack of teachers of Greek prevented the establishment of 
many of the second type. One important distinction concerning 
these schools was embodied in their relation to higher institutions : 
graduates of the classical school of either type were ipso facto 
admitted to the universities, graduates of the "real" school were 
admitted only to the higher technical institutions. All this really 
settled nothing and left the adherents of both sides dissatisfied, for 
each party wanted its own type of secondary school to be the sole 
type. In 1871 the partisans of the classical school won, for the time 
being, a complete victory. This will be taken up under the reac- 
tionary period. 

Education for girls and women made great progress in the reign 
of Alexander, particularly that for the middle classes, for the higher 
classes and the clergy had already been provided for. In '58 pro- 
vision was made for .two grades of day schools for girls, one with a 
course of six, the other with a course of three years, based on a study 
of girls' education in Germany, ordered by the Empress Maria. 
These were open to all classes, and were transformed, in 1870, into 
a ten years' course of gymnasium and pro-gymnasium, with a sup- 
plementary course of one year in pedagogy for those who intended 
to teach. These schools were under charge of the Ministry of Edu- 
cation, but others quite similiar were opsned under the Department 
of the Empress Maria. This naturally led to a demand for still 
higher education for women, and in view of the attitude of the gov- 
ernment in 1863, in refusing to permit auditors, many women had 
gone to foreign universities. As a result of propaganda begun by 
Madame Konradi in 1867, who was editor of the "Nedelia", a move- 
ment was started which attained, first, the right to attend "advanced 
courses" which were given in the evenings, Sundays and holy days, 
voluntarily by the professors of St. Petersburg University. Four 
years later, in 1876, in order to prevent further "emigration" for 
education on the part of women, provision was made for their 
higher education in L^^niversity towns, admission to these courses 
being made dependent on the completion of a secondary school, or 
similar status. In 1881 this course was extended to four years. Sim- 
iliar results were attained in the field of medicine. 

78 



The strict attitude of the government toward private schools 
also relaxed, many of the restrictions of the previous reign were 
removed, and private schools allowed to be established, but subject 
to inspection to show that they were at least equal to those of the 
state, particularly as regarded curriculum and teaching staff. Right 
of entrance to the universities from the private secondary schools 
was made dependent upon the passing of an examination mutually 
agreed upon by the owner and the state. 

All these new regulations and new schools went far toward sat- 
isfying the demand for education and would, if undisturbed, have 
doubtless proven the basis for a still more liberal and modern school 
system. But the reforms were destined to be once more overturned. 

The new university regulations had been in force only three 
years when Tolstoy became Minister of Education, and began his 
determined plans once more to subject the universities to centraliza- 
tion and complete control. The events of 1861-4 and 1866 were, 
of course, the cause. From 1872 to 1879, the year of his dismis- 
sal, numerous reports were submitted on the subject, and many 
conferences held, and though it seemed for a moment, in 1879, that 
liberal ideas would, after all, prevail, the murder of the Tsar in 
1881 turned the scale. The new regulations, however, were not 
actually put into operation until 1884, under Alexander III. 

The 1864 law for primary education was quite as unsatisfactory 
to Tolstoy as the freedom of the universities had been. The two 
new types of primary schools which he founded he placed under 
the charge, not of the School Councils, but directly under the Min- 
istry, and in 1869 the Zemstvo institutions were brought under 
stricter control by means of the newly created inspectors of primary 
schools, and finally in '74 the control of the local nobility over the 
Zemstvo schools was made stronger. 

Similiarly in the field of secondary education, reaction gained 
the upper hand. The question of the classics is bound up with the 
changes in this field. The classics had been losing what little favor 
they had enjoyed among educational and cultural leaders, and with 
the growing independence in spiritual and intellectual matters from 
the West, the reaction against the classics had also grown. More- 
over, they were not so integral a part of the civilization or the lan- 
guage of the Slavic world, and the leaning toward realism in 
thought and literature of the period led still further away from 
them. But the Government, in the period of educational reaction 
under Tolstoy, turned to the classics for these very reasons. Just 
because the classics were remote in their bearings from modern, and 

79 



particularly modern Russian, life, for this very reason they would 
offer good subjects of study for Russian youth in the universities. 
Classicism, it was held, would distract them from current matters 
and focus their attention on a dim and distant past where heresy of 
opinion would not reflect in daily life and action. Classics, then, and 
mathematics were to be the chief subjects of the secondary field. 
Moreover the specious argument was also used that the material 
progress of the West was the result of the absorption of the classical 
culture, and was in direct proportion, in each country, to the degree 
in which it had been assimilated. The banishment of the classics of 
the 1849-50 period was held to be the cause of Nihilism and the so- 
cial unrest among the students. History, Russian, science and mod- 
ern languages were shown to be subjects in which personal opinions 
could also be conveyed ; the classics would be, it was held, politically 
sterile. The Statutes of 1871 carried these principles into effect. 

One other instance of the interest of the general public in edu- 
cation was the Sunday School movement of the first period of the 
reign of Alexander II, though their development, like that of all 
other popular movements, was checked by the later reaction. These 
schools were primarily concerned with secular education, were open 
to all comers, and were taught gratuituosly by students of the uni- 
versities and gymnasia as well as by regular professors of estab- 
lished state institutions, while expenses were met by contributions, 
the earnings of concerts and from other private sources. The move- 
ment began in the Kiev Educational District, the prime mover being 
the Curator, Pirogov. It was inspired entirely by a desire to aid the 
newly freed serfs, and the government was, at first, entirely favor- 
ably inclined toward them. But by 1862, when some 'Hundreds of 
these schools had been established, the attitude of the authorities 
changed, and in that year, they were ordered closed until they could 
be reorganized on a new basis. This was due to a report that the 
teaching in a few of the schools had been against religion, property 
and the State, and while the schools were again permitted to open in 
accordance with the laws of '64 and '74. under state control, the 
movement did not regain its old enthusiasm until after 1890, in the 
reign of Alexander III. 

Thus the whole spirit of progress and reform disappeared un- 
der the Ministry of Tolstoy, a man not opposed to education, but with 
very narrow and limited conceptions of its nature and its principles, 
its purposes and the methods of attaining them. He was called to 
office largely as a result of a reaction which had already started, and 
which was, in its turn, due to social activities and propaganda that 
expressed a hatred for existing conditions, and because it did so was 

80 



condemned to be itself stamped out, and the possibility of its rebirth 
prevented. Thus with the increased centralization and conservatism 
of the closing years of Alexander's reign, and remembering the fate 
which he met, we shall be prepared to see still further vacilation and 
readjustments in the field of education in the next reign, the period 
of Alexander III. (Kornilov, vol. II, chaps. XXVII, XXXI, XXXV. 
Milioukov, 69, vol. II, pp. 356-367. Chekhov, chaps. I. II, III to p. 
168, and throughout. Darlington, pp. 87-132. Source 3, Part V, 
chaps. II-VIII ; Part VI, chaps. II-IX ; Part VIL chaps. II-X; Part 
VIII, chaps. II-III.) 



81 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Alexander III, 1881-1894 

The Beginning of the Great Reaction. 

It will be remembered that Alexander II was assassinated on 
the afternoon of the day on which he had approved of a series of 
reform proposed by his Minister. Alexander III, his second son, 
though by nature not liberal, had gained some reputation along that 
line, and this, coupled with the fact that he decided to adopt the plans 
as approved by his father, gave some hope that his reign would not 
be entirely reactionary. But Alexander III proved to be no excep- 
tion to his predecessors, in being able to shift his policy as time went 
on, so that we find in his reign the beginning of perhaps the darkest 
period of repression in modern Russian history, leading directly to 
revolution, and in the time of his successor, to the present Com- 
munistic state of the Bolsheviki. There was some little indecision 
at first as well as a blurring of the exact nature of the policy which 
was going to prevail. For the remainder of 1881 it seemed that 
reform would gain the lead, and the matter was debated at court, 
as in society in general, by the adherents of each policy, some rep- 
resenting the new reforms as equivalent to the ruin of Russia, others 
calling them the one salvation of the country. The new Minister 
of the Interior, Ignatiev, a Slavophile, announced in May, that the 
state wished to unite people and government, and would allow, for 
this purpose, local self government, and would restore the Zemstvos 
to their former position and to prove its sincerity summoned, in 
June of 1881, workers of the Zemstvos in order to confer with them. 
But this mere promise of reform was not to continue long. Already 
in April of the same year the Tsar had issued a Manifesto, reading, 
in part, "In the midst of our great grief God's voice commands us 
to stand firm at the helm of the government, relying upon Divine 
Providence, with faith in the power and truth of the Autocracy 
which, for the benefit of the people, we are called upon to strengthen 
and guard from any encroachments". (Quoted, Kornilov, vol. II, 
p. 252.) This could hardly be construe'd as other than the triumph 
of the reactionary party at court ; and so it was. Yet it may well 
be doubted if the Tsar himself was the director of affairs, for two 

82 



outstanding figures dominate the whole of his reign, Tolstoy and 
Pobiedonostsev. The former was the same Tolstoy who had nulli- 
fied all educational reforms in the preceding reign, and who now 
became Minister of the Interior; the latter was, if possible, even 
more reactionary, had been the tutor of the Tsar, was called in the 
phrase of the time, the "nihilist" of reaction, and had become, in 
1880, Procurator of the Holy Synod. The period of Alexander III 
is, in a sense, the period of their dominance, and nowhere else is the 
spirit and the letter of the reactionary element so well and so power- 
fully expressed as in the latter's Essays, translated in English as 
"Reflections of a Russian Statesman." Only the revolution of 1905 
was to break their power. 

With the accession of Tolstoy to the Ministry of the Interior, 
the government seemed to feel safe in its policy of coercion. The 
schools and the Zemstvos were the first institutions to feel the ef- 
fects. Failing in the attempt to close the Zemstvo schools, he en- 
deavored, by a new Law of the Zemstvos, drawn up in collaboration 
with Pazukhin, a highly class-conscious noble and land owner, which 
was intended to restore the old class system as far as possible. The 
Zemstvo law of '64 had, it is true, been based on property, but no 
single group had been allowed to overbalance the other two ; the 
new law, of 1890, gave the "gentry" a legal majority in most of the 
Zemstvos, the rights of the peasants being greatly restricted. "Land 
Captains" were chosen from the nobility of each district, given 
dictatorial powers over the communal life of the peasantry, and were 
thus able to rule quite arbitrarily, and even to interfere in private 
afifairs. Moreover, the economic condition of the peasants became 
worse as their number and the general population became greater, 
for with the advent of larger new generations among them, the 
amount of land after subdivision among a family was very small, 
and by this time in many cases exhausted by poor methods of farm- 
ing. Land was high in price, sometimes unobtainable, and only the 
better ofif among the peasants could purchase it, so many went to 
the towns, or migrated to Siberia. Those who remained on the 
original land were, in many cases, subject to famine, the death rate 
was high as well as the disease ratio. The only relief the govern- 
ment saw fit to offer was some reduction in the "redemption pay- 
ments", and the establishment of a bank for loans. But again the 
richer among them were the only ones to benefit by these meager 
concessions. In 1891-1892 came the inevitable results. — twenty prov- 
inces were swept with famine and disease. The government held 
back, but the educated public, particularly the students, threw them- 
selves into the work of relief, and thus began a new movement of 

83 



understanding between the "black" peasant and the class of the edu- 
cated and socially broad-minded. 

In the '70s there had been an industrial boom, but it had been 
short lived, for wages had soon fallen, and strikes were frequent. 
The period of development, constituting Russia's "industrial revolu- 
tion" was to come in the last few years of the 19th century, but the 
period immediately before it produced a crisis in which the govern- 
ment had to interfere. Child labor for those below twelve years of 
age was forbidden, the hours of labor for those between twelve and 
fifteen were limited to eight per day, and it was forbidden to employ 
children in night labor. Inspectors were appointed to see to the 
enforcement of these regulations, and conditions were revealed, in- 
conceivably vile. The years 1884 to 1886 saw the issue of several 
beneficial laws in this direction, but it was quite evident that Russia 
was approaching an industrial organization of society in the large 
centers with all the economic and social problems that such a growth 
involves. But,- curiously enough, the workers themselves were not 
allowed to strive for their own betterment, and participation in a 
strike became a criminal ofifense. In connection with this condition 
of a large class of people, Russia was being affected by the West in 
a new direction, by the rapid and prolific influx of capital. The years 
1900 to 1902 showed the results of "over-production", and from then 
to the War of 1905-1906 the development was slower. 

Russia was developing in still other directions, and the coloni- 
zation of Siberia as well as the conquest of Central Asia showed at 
once her power and her necessities, for the need of land was a funda- 
mental cause of this growth, though the latter movement was also 
prompted by the need of subduing hostile neighbors. The details of 
these projects, however, seem outside the immediate field of this 
essay. But in connection with the development in the Far East, we 
meet with a factor which influenced the future course of Russia's 
career to a tremendous extent. By 1858 Russia had forced the 
cession of a considerable territory from China, including the harbor 
of Vladivostok, but when she attempted in '61 to establish a naval 
base midway between Korea and Japan, it became evident to the 
latter country that Russia constituted a menace to her. For some 
thirty years however, the matter rested, but quite evidently held 
within itself the germs of a future war with Japan. The war, itself, 
did not come in the time of Alexander, but in the reign of his suc- 
cessor, Nicholas II, but the causes stretched back a long way, and 
the results a corresponding distance into the future. 

Poland, too, was a factor in the development under Alex- 
ander, but it is better considered under the social movements of the 

84 



reign. Foreign affairs and the diplomatic-political dealings with 
Western Europe, particularly with Germany, had little influence 
on the course of the internal development of Russia and showed no 
traceable effects on her institutions or social life, for Russia, since 
Alexander I, had more and more turned herself to the working out 
of those ideas which she had already received from tne West, and 
those ideas which seemed, whether truly or not, to be particularly 
and essentially national and Slavic. (Kornilov, vol. II, chaps. 
XXXVIII-XLI. Mavor, vol. II. Book IV. chaps. VIII, X; Book 
VI, chap. V. Zilliacus, chaps. VII, IX, X, XII. Beazley, Book III, 
chaps. V and VI to pp. 518.) 

The Broadening Social Movement 

That Russia was growing in complexity and instability is clearly 
shown by the social movements of the period of Alexander III. They 
have an appearance of being far better adapted to circumstances in 
methods and theories than their predecessors, and while they fall 
short of their ultimate purposes, the situation is apparently left in 
the hands of a succeeding group of leaders, — destined, as events 
proved, to follow on the heels of the defeated state of the period of 
the Great War. 

The repression of the Zemstvos by Tolstoy has been mentioned, 
as well as the labor legislation, forced by the terrible conditions of life 
of the factory workers, and the exhaustion and scarcity of land. All 
these were mutual causes and effects of the social changes. The 
famine of 1891 had brought the peasant and the social worker into 
really sympathetic relations, and the new bond was not allowed to 
be broken. The gentry land-owners, furthermore, were losing the 
economic basis of a ruling class; their land was not being worked 
profitably, the payments for the land given to the peasants in '61 
had been, in many cases, spent, or surrendered for debts to the state, 
so that as the new centur)'- was dawning, more and more of the gentry 
were entering commercial and professional life, selling their estates 
and losing their special privileges. So, in spite of Tolstoy's legisla- 
tion of 1890, giving control to the resident gentry, little by little the 
Zemstvos grew in self-government, helped by the liberal, educated 
members of the community, — and doctors, engineers, veterinaries, 
agriculturalists, many of whom had passed the liberal stage and 
were out and out radicals. From 1890 on. rapid progress was made 
in the organization and maintenance by the Zemstvos of schools, 
medical service, hospitals, treatment for the insane, measures against 
epidemics and famines, libraries, book-shops, lectures, agricultural 

85 



experimental stations, insurance for stock and crops, prevention 
of fire, and many other services which the government had not and 
evidently did not intend to supply. The Zemstvos were the movers 
in all this, and were making not only a social but a financial success 
of their undertakings, when once more, toward the end of Alex- 
ander's reign, the government became alarmed and began to use the 
old repressive measures. The full development of this conflict is the 
opening phase of the period of Nicholas II. 

The revolutionary movement, proper, shows a characteristic 
change ; instead of appealing to the peasant, who had proven unre- 
liable and unenlightened, the new propaganda was directed to the 
growing class of factory workers, who were rapidly making of 
themselves a true proletariate, dependent entirely upon industry for 
wages, and residing in the large centers. It is in this period of the 
revolutionary movement that we find the beginning of the active 
formulation and preaching of the theories of the German Marx, 
whose Communist Manifesto of 1848 supplies the motto for the 
Soviet Republic of the present day. There began a combination of 
political and economic aims which endeavored to utilize the work- 
man as the source of power to bring them about. But as only the 
economic side of the program appealed to the workman, a case again 
of lack of training and education, the political side was temporarily 
abandoned. The full fruition of this, like the Zemstvo movement 
came only with the accession of Nicholas. All this was partly the 
work of the active party of the Land and Freedom society which 
had split in 1879, as described in the last section on social move- 
ments. In 1880 this party, the "Will of the People" section, pub- 
lished in its secretly-printed organ a program for reconstruction, 
embodying the following demands, — a permanent representative 
assembly, self-government for the provinces, complete freedom of 
press, speech, meeting, election and conscience, universal sufiFrage, 
militia in place of an army, nationalization of the soil, transfer of 
factories to the workmen. In view of the program of the Bolsheviki, 
whose period is but forty years later, these items, particularly the 
last two, are of interest After the assassination of Alexander II. the 
revolutionaries turned again to propaganda, and made the army, as 
well as the workman, the chief field of their labors. Several times it 
seemed as if adequate leadership would have precipitated an outburst, 
but each time the government was forwarned or, in one way or 
another, was able to prevent a critical situation. Terrorist methods 
were constantly in evidence, dynamite factories were established 
secretly, and when one had been discovered, another took its place. 
Public outrages were frequent, as well as attempts on the life of the 

86 



Tsar. But these methods were not productive of the desired results, 
for men as brave as the revolutionists were to be found in any num- 
ber to take the place of assasinated officials, and violence always 
recoiled on the terrorists with greater severity than was profitable. 
It was in part this disadvantageous side of the terrorist activity 
which led to the broader movement of the group endeavoring to con- 
vert the workmen, for a larger body than a few desperate and reck- 
less terrorists was necessary for the accomplishment of the social 
purposes which inspired even the most violent acts. So the revolu- 
tionists turned to the printing press as a more satisfactory instru- 
ment wherewith to accomplish their ends, and scores of secret presses 
were estabhshed in the period between the accession and the death 
of Alexander. There was, furthermore, a union of thought and ac- 
tivity of all the various revolutionary and radical groups of workers, 
who began to realize that only with the union of them all, would be 
possible even their continued existence, not to speak of their con- 
tinued working against the constantly increasing vigilance and power 
of the police and secret organizations operating agauis' mem. Their 
fuller power was to be exhibited in the next reign. (Kornilov, vol. 
II. chaps. XXXIX-XLI. Mavor, vol. II, Book IV, chaps. VIII, IX; 
Book VI, chap. V. Zilliacus, chaps. VII, X, XII. Ivanov-Razum- 
nik, vol. II, chaps. IV-VI.) 

The Effects of the Great Reaction in Education 

The first Minister of Education, Nikolai, was not adverse to 
reform in education, but under pressure of the general court attitude 
he resigned, in 1882, to be succeeded by the former assistant of Count 
Tolstoy, Delianov, and with the latter's accession, there was no ques- 
tion that the schools would be conducted in the same way as Tolstoy 
had himself administered them during his time of office. The aims 
of the Autocracy, in the field of education, were Russification and 
centralization, ruthlessly pursued This policy was carried out by 
restricting the universities still further, giving the Church an in- 
creased share in the control of primary education, limiting the rights 
of Jews and the lower classes, and requiring the use of Russian as 
the language of teaching in the Lutheran Baltic schools. 

The universities, as usual, as the hot-bed of independent 
thought, were the first to receive attention. Delianov, before the 
Imperial Council, pictured the universities as degenerate institu- 
tions, which had been corrupted by the freedom which they had 
had, and which had become the center for the "anti-governmental" 
ideas among the youth of the country. "The root of the evil", said 

87 



Delianov, "lies in the fact that the Government has held itself aloof 
from university instruction, and has left it to the individual discretion 
of the professors, and to the equally arbitrary decision of Faculty 
meetings and the University Council, . . . who could not possibly su- 
pervise their work with anything like superior authority. . . ." 
(Quoted, Darlington, p. 133.) In 1884, after consultation and dis- 
cussion by the Imperial Council, the majority of whom did not at 
that time favor the proposed stringent regulations, the Tsar approved 
the act, the passage of which was due largely to the determined per- 
severance of Tolstoy and Delianov. The universities had now 
reached the lowest limit of self-control, for at no time, not even in 
the period of Nicholas I, had the control been so strict, nor univer- 
sity freedom, of both students and officers, so circumscribed. All 
members of the universities now became state appointed officials, and 
through examining commissions and examination syllabuses control 
of the course of stud}' and the right to graduate was insured to the 
government. The choice of the students both as to the courses and 
the electives as well as the hours of attendance, was also rigidly 
defined, and made much narrower than in the period immediately 
preceding. 

The changes in the secondary schools were neither extensive 
nor important. The real schools were criticised as not satisfactory, 
and under competition with the new technical schools described later, 
were turned into "general" schools, i.e., they ceased to be schools 
where a "special" education was given.. The regulations of '88 in- 
creased the hours of modern language study, mathematics, Russian, 
history and nature study, and decreased the hours devoted to tech- 
nical studies. In 1890 the curriculum of the classical school also 
underwent revision, and Russian and religion were stressed more, 
and the classics less, though these changes pleased neither side of the 
partisans of the old controversy. 

The most constructive work of the reign was done in the reor- 
ganization and enlargement of the field of technical education, 
which had had a comparatively recent development, dating back for 
its beginnings, apart from Peter, to not earlier than 1865. These 
schools, furthermore, unlike those of Peter, had been and were for 
primary and intermediate work, whereas Peter's had been higher in 
grade. In 1881, such of these schools as had been already established 
under the Ministry of Finance and various other ministries were 
transferred to the Ministry of Public Education, in order to make 
uniform the regulations which governed them, and to outline a policy 
for their future development. The Ukaz of '88 determined the de- 



tails of the reorganization, provided definitely for two grades, inter- 
mediate and lower, and for trade schools, intended to prepare for 
definite trades. Apprentice schools and lowar trade schools for the 
rural districts followed in 1893-1895. 

But the most important of all the measures taken in this reign 
was in connection with primary education, for the changes in sec- 
ondary and technical education were comparatively insignificant, and 
the restrictions placed upon the universities so familiar that they 
did not constitute a new departure. In connection with the whole 
attitude toward the primary schools, attention must again be drawn 
to the essays of Pobiedonostsev, for they contain in clear and de- 
tailed form the whole reactionary spirit of the period. It had become 
evident that the Zemstvos, in spite of their efforts and determination, 
had not accomplished the huge task of bringing elementary educa- 
tion within reach of all the rural dwellers. Attention was therefore 
directed to the hitherto despised and illegal "shkoly gramotnosti," 
or reading-and-writing schools, which existed in practically all rural 
districts, and it was proposed to make their existence legal and en- 
courage them, in the hope of thus bringing at least the rudiments of 
learning within reach of all. It was also felt that the teachers of 
these schools were, from their very ignorance, incapable of spreading 
revolutionary doctrines. So in '81 a regulation was issued legalizing 
them, and the "shkoly gramotnosti" at once became famous, the 
fervid nationalists and Slavophiles hailing them as the one genuine 
Russian educational institution, the one thing not borrowed from 
abroad, and they became, as time went on, an increasingly important 
factor in Russian education. This may, in no very uncertain sense, 
be considered an advance, though the "shkoly gramotnosti" were not 
the equivalent of the ideal which had been sought for "all the people". 
But three years later a step was taken that was greatly to limit the 
field of primary education. This was the edict of '84 which set up 
a rival primary school system side by side with the regular one, — 
the new schools being in charge of the Holy Synod and permeated 
with the religious element in method and curriculum. This was due 
to "dissatisfaction" with the Zemstvo schools and those of the Min- 
istry of Education, because they did not have the right religious 
atmosphere nor the right sort of "orthodox" teachers. Though the 
teaching of religion was obligatory in all primary schools, the priest 
who was appointed to give the religious lesson had no further con- 
trol of teaching, and often, in the absence of a priest, a lay teacher 
assumed his functions, with no guarantee that his teaching would 
be in accord with the creed of the Orthodox Church. All this, ac- 

89 



cording to the Church party, tended to secularise the primary schools, 
which should be, they contended, definitely religious in tone. More- 
over, the "v narod" movement had shown that the primary school 
could be made an instrument for the propagation of revolutionarv 
doctrines, and the fact that many revolutionists had been school 
teachers had also been definitely proven. The new Holy Synod schools 
which were opened in 1884, with the object "of strengthening among 
the people the Orthodox teaching of faith and Christian morals, and 
of imparting useful elementary knowledge", were of two types, a 
two year school and a four year school, the former consisting of one 
class, and the latter of two. The curriculum consisted of religion, 
church singing, reading of Russian and Church Slavonic (the "holy" 
language), writing and elementary arithmetic. The longer course 
added Russian and Church history. Thus out of a total of some 
twenty-five hours instruction per week, church subjects occupied 
approximately half the time, and all instruction was given by the 
clergy or immediately under their supervision and in accord with 
their principles. For the supervision of the whole system, the 
Synod created an organization similar to that of the Ministry of 
Public Education and for funds relied on local contributions and 
private gifts, as did the Zemstvos, but received, in addition, aid from 
the imperial treasury. Appeals, on their part, to the Zemstvos did 
not generally meet with success. In 1891 all of the "shkoly gramot- 
nosti" were placed in charge of the Synod, and it was also decreed 
that all new Sunday Schools, not connected with a definite day 
school, should also come under its protection and administration. 
Thus a very favorably placed rival system of the regular elementarv 
schools was created and started on its career, controversy between 
them being inevitable and a final settlement impossible until such 
time as one of them should retire from the field. This did not take 
place until the edict of the Soviet Republic definitely made all schools 
secular. 

Certain other activities of the Ministry of Education are also 
important indications of the general policy of the period, — first, the 
russification of the I^utheran schools of the Baltic provinces and 
Poland, and secondly, the treatment accorded the Jews, socially and 
in the field of education. In 1886 to 1894 the Baltic schools were 
gradually made a purely Russian institution, and in 1885 the same 
process, begun in Poland in the period of 1868, was completed. The 
Jews were subject to the same "russification" process, but with 
stricter measures and even more deplorable results. The "tempor- 
ary laws" of 1882, aimed at that race, have continued in force to 

90 



the period just before the present, and the narrowing and curtaiHng 
of both the habitation districts and the rights of education have been 
a consistent part of the pohcy of Nicholas II. Jews, according to 
the regulation of '82. were not allowed to hold public or state posi- 
tions, were forbidden to buy real estate outside of towns, and bv 
the regulations of 1886, were allowed only a proportion of 10% in 
the universities within the Pale of Settlement, that is Poland and 
South- Western Russia, in spite of the fact that by far the greatest 
proportion of the whole population was Jewish, while in the two 
capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg, the proportion was limited to 
2%. Pobiedonostsev is credited with the prediction that the restric- 
tions against the Jews would "convert a third, a third would emigrate, 
and the rest would die of hunger". It was claimed that the Jews 
were revolutionists, — and this was the remedy. To sum up the 
whole attitude of the reign on its social side the following quotation 
given by Darlington, p. 147, from the Ministerial Circular of 1887, 
is excellent, — " . . . Thus, in strict accordance with this regulation, 
gymnasia and progymnasia are dispensed from receiving the children 
of coachmen, lacqueys, cooks, washerwomen, small tradesmen, and 
the like, whose children, with the exception, perhaps, of those who 
are gifted with extraordinary capacities, ought by no means to be 
transferred from the sphere to which they belong, and thus brought, 
as many years' experience has shown, to slight their parents, to feel 
dissatisfied with their lot, and to conceive an aversion to tnt, .existing 
inequality of fortune which is in the nature of thmgs unavoidable". 
(Kornilov, vol. II, chaps. XXXVIII-XLI. Milioukov. 69, pp. 367- 
389. Chekhov, chaps. III. V, VI. Source 3, Part VIII. chaps. IV-X.) 



91 



CHAPTER IX 

Nicholas II, 1894-1917 

The Continuance of the Great Reaction 

The thirteen years of Alexander III and the twenty-three of 
Nicholas II really form, in considering their characteristics, one large 
period, — the Great Reaction, for, with occasional gleams of promise 
here and there, the whole is merely a continuous effort on the part 
of the State and the Church to subdue, once and for all, the rising 
power of the opposition. In another sense, too, the two reigns are 
part of one another, in that the completion and fruition of the first 
is seen only in the second, for the comparatively short period of Alex- 
ander did not permit the gathering storm of social revolution to 
fully mature. Finally, the same personality, Pobiedonostsev, was 
all powerful under Nicholas, as he had been under Alexander. 

The Russian people, with all the memories of their history in 
the past, and with recollections of Alexander III, yet looked forward 
with hope and confidence to the new Tsar. His first Manifesto was 
looked for with eagerness, for in it would doubtless be readable his 
attitude and purpose. But it was only hope, for the first acts of 
the new Tsar showed with unmistakable clearness that the policy of 
his father would be his own. The address of the representatives 
of the Zemstvo of Tver was the occasion of the first expression of 
policy. It read, in part, "... We allow ourselves to indulge in the 
hope that on the height of the Throne the voice of the people and 
the expression of its desires will be heard and listened to. . . We 
earnestly hope that during your reign the rights of individuals, as 
well as those of already existing representative bodies, will be pro- 
tected permanently and energetically. . . . We expect. Gracious Sov- 
ereign, that these representative bodies will be allowed to voice their 
opinions in matters in which they are concerned, . . .". It must be 
remembered, too, that this was a sincere and moderate expression 
of opinion from a legal and representative deputation, not a demand 
from a revolutionary body, yet the answer was as well adapted to 
the one as the other. ". . . It has been brought to My knowledge." 
answered the Tsar, "that during the last few months there have 
been heard in some Zemstvos the voices of some who have indulged 

92 



in the senseless dreams with respect to the participation of the Zem- 
stvos in the general direction of the internal affairs of the State. Let 
it be known by all that I shall devote my whole power to the best 
service of the people, but that the principle of Autocracy will l.-e 
maintained by me as firmly as by my lamented father". (Kornilov, 
vol. II, pp. 277-278.) Thus was clear notice served on the country 
that there would be no change in policy or method, and that Ortho- 
doxy, Autocracy and Nationalism were still to be the aims and idcrd 
of the state and the throne. 

This statement was received with indignation and astonishmenr 
by both conservatives and revolutionists. To the latter, who had 
seen their own efforts combatted and suppressed, this was a new and 
a legal appeal, and that even this should meet with disapproval, only 
the more united them in their more violent methods of appeal. Their 
reply and the renewal of their struggle will be considered in the next 
section. 

It is difficult, in the reign of Alexander, to separate sharply the 
threads of internal and external affairs, for Russia had been, as 
was noticed previously, growing more and more complex. Conse- 
quently, it was not so much ideas imported from abroad, nor fears 
of the occurrence at home of events taking place in other countries, 
as actual events involving Russia and the outside world which modi- 
fied, in this and the immediately preceding reigns, the course of de- 
velopment of her civilization. The event which now re-directed the 
course of her activities was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. 
calling to mind, in the magnitude of its results, both the Crimean 
War, and the disaster of 1917. 

We traced the expansion of Russia, in the last reign, to that 
point of the intrusion into the Far East when Japan realized that 
Russia was to be her chief menace. From the accession of Nicholas 
a still more active policy was adopted, and the Trans-Siberian Rail- 
way continued. The victory of Japan over China in 1894-1895 closed, 
for the time, the road to Russia's expansion, but when Japan had 
been forced to yield, through diplomacy, the fruits of her victor}', 
Russia immediately continued her former advance, and through her 
own diplomacy, money and the excuse of protecting her interests 
during the Boxer rebellion, occupied Manchuria and began to pene- 
trate; even into Korea. Japan proposed negotiations, was treated 
with contempt, broke off diplomatic relations, and initiated a war 
which was to have huge significance for Russia, both abroad rind 
nt home. Russia was unprepared for war, internal affairs were bad, 
and after a series of severe losses by land and by sea. she concluded 

93 



peace on terms favoring Japan, and turned her attention to internal 
affairs, which were rapidly becoming desperate. 

From 1905 to 1914, the year of the outbreak of the Great War, 
Russia was in an almost constant state of turmoil and disorder, the 
outline of which will be presented in the next section, and by the 
latter year was on the verge of just such another revolution as had 
occurred in 1905, when tlie news of a new war redirected the atten- 
tion of all to the necessity of repelling an alien enemy. Again war 
and the failures of an inefficient Autocracy and disho;iest Bureauc- 
racy led to revolution, this time completely overwhelming State and 
Throne, and leaving as inheritors of the Tsars, first, a temporary 
Constitutional regime and then the present Soviet Republic. The 
events of 1917 to the present will be considered in tnc next chapter. 
(Kornilov, Russia under Nicholas II, chaps. I-IV. Beazley. Book 
HI, chap. VI, pp. 518-546. Mayor, vol. II, Book IV, chaps. IX-XII ; 
Book V, chaps. VII, VIII; Book VI, chaps. I, IV. V. VII. X. XI, 
XIII, XIV.) 

The Grozvth of Oppositions : Zemstvos, and Revolutionists. 

The attitude of the Zemstvos at the beginning of the reign of 
Nicholas, and the latter's uncompromising policy of adherence to the 
principles of his father, were indicated in the quotations of the last 
section The growing opposition on the part both of the Zemstvos 
as well as the more violent bodies of workers constitutes the main 
story of Ih-e reign up to the revolution of 1905. Education is treated 
much as under Alexander III, and the attention of society, while 
taking it for granted that reforms must be granted in the field of 
education, is turned more and more to political and economic ques- 
tions, a broader field, and including the former as part of it. 

It soon became quite apparent that, no matter how courteous 
and ho-^v moderate the demands of the Zemstvos were, they con- 
stituted in essence a policy and a principle utterly at variance with 
the state, and that either the self-government of the Zemstvos or 
the autocracy of the state would eventually have to yield. Compro- 
iriise was inherently impossible. Count Witte who had become Min- 
ister of Finance in 1894 wrote a short essay on the subject (Autoc- 
racy and the Zemstvos) in which he clearly points out that the 
progress of the Zemstvos and their ideas of self-government must 
eventually lead to constitutionalism, and that the government must 
definitely decide to foster such a movement or crush it out. The 
latter policy was decided upon, and from 1899 to 1904 a severe cam- 
paign was carried on against them, petitions submitted by them on 

94 



matters closely connected with their legal sphere of work were re- 
jected, Zemstvos were forbidden to form unions or to meet in com- 
mon, and they were even forbidden to organize famine relief cam- 
paigns. New lesirictions were made against the Zemstvo schools, 
and efforts were made to prevent them publishing literature for their 
schools or for the peasants. In 1902 they were forbidden to collect 
statistical material, or to hire expert workers for the sanitary and 
veterinary work imless the government could certify that they wei'e 
"sound" poHtically. 

Naturally the moderate Zemstvo opinion grew stronger, tended 
to become allied with the more radical element, and, above all, like 
other movements in this period, verged toward a political propa- 
ganda. In 1902, a congress of Zemstvo leaders, headed by Shipov, 
passed a series of resolutions condemning the policy of the gov- 
ernment, and another council in 1903 asked that all laws dealing with 
local affairs be first submitted to the Zemstvos for criticism. The 
local Zemstvos continued to become more and more liberal, even 
discussing political questions, a subject strictly forbidden, and lead- 
ing in many cases to exile and imprisonment. In 1902 the movement 
acquired a journal, "Osvobozhdenie" (Liberation), published abroad, 
and intended to unite the opinion of the various sections of the coun- 
try. Finally, in 1904, as a result of activity on the part of the more 
liberal both within and without the Zemstvos, there was formed the 
"Soyuz Osvobozhdenia" (Union of Liberation), which took as its 
aims the political emancipation of Russia by means of the abolition 
of autocracy and the establishment of a democratic constitutional 
regime. Thus from purely economic local matters, the Zemstvos 
were forced, by the unyielding policy of the government, to which 
they had originally been entirely loyal, to the last extreme of polit- 
ical activity motivated by a desire to overthrow the state and the 
throne. 

In the meantime, side by side with this movement of the Zem- 
stvos, there was also constant activity on the part of the revolution- 
ists, who turned this time more and more to the proletariat of the 
towns and cities. To the famous address of the members of the 
Tver Zemstvo, whom Nicholas had rebuked, the revolutionists replied 
by a letter published abroad, which takes up the challenge of the 
Tsar : "You have spoken, and your words are at present known 
everywhere in Russia ; ay, in the whole civilized world. Until now 
you were unknown, but since yesterday you have become a definite 
factor in the situation of the country, about whom there is no room 
left 'for senseless dreams'. . . . First of all, you are badly informed 

95 



about the tendencies against which you have decided to raise your 
voice in your speech. There has not been heard in one single as- 
sembly of any Zemstvo one single word against that autocracy which 
is so dear to your heart. ... In one word, the only thing that was 
in question was the desire to see fall and crumble to the ground 
that wall of bureaucracy and courtierdom that has always parted the 
sovereign from the Russian people. . . . Your speech has strength- 
ened in others the determination to fight to the bitter end against a 
hateful order of things, and to fight it with all the means they may 
have at their disposal and in their power. You have been the first 
to begin the struggle, and it will not be long before you find your- 
self entangled by it". (Kornilov, vol. II, pp. 279-280.) As one of 
the first moves Plekhanov and other members of the "Black Parti- 
tion" founded, some little time after the formation of that organiza- 
tion, a still further subdivision, the "Liberation of Labor" Party 
and still later, in 1898, a congress of various socialistic groups re- 
sulted in the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor 
Party, with a program concentrating on economic questions, and 
using strikes as a method of obtaining results. From 1895 to 1896 
so many strikes were organized, that the police of Moscow obtained 
official permission to organize strikes themselves among the workers 
of Moscow, in order thus to draw them away from the socialistic 
and revolutionary parties, and break up the unanimity of the move- 
ment. But the strikes got beyond their control, had to be sup- 
pressed with bloodshed, and accomplished the double purpose of 
discouraging this so-called "Police Socialism" and also once more 
showing the revolutionists the uselessness of purely economic activ- 
ity, since it could be so easily imitated by the opposition. Thus, with- 
in the ranks of the Social Democrats, began a bitter struggle between 
the more conservative and the more radical, the "economists" and 
the "politicians", resulting, in a conference held at Brussels, in 1903, 
in a split within the party. The moderate minority, favoring "ortho- 
dox Marxism" and believing in peaceful methods and the use of the 
existing parliamentary methods, became the "Mensheviki" ; the more 
violent majority of that time, hating slower methods of reform and 
the greater gains of the "bourgeois" elements, became, under the 
leadership of Lenin, the "Bolsheviki". These Social Revolutionists, 
or Bolsheviki, carried on the tradition of the former "Will of the 
People" party, using terroristic methods, and working for the people 
as a whole, and endeavoring to educate both the peasant and the 
proletariat of the towns and cities to the point where they would 
use an opportunity to bring about the promised "revolution". The 

96 



Bolsheviki were, furthermore, not interested in the immediate ma- 
terial welfare of the peasant, for they wished to bring about, if pos- 
sible, his transformation into a part of the "propertyless proletariat". 
Into the details of the terroristic acts of this whole period it is not 
necessary to go, but many assassinations took place, including that 
of the Minister of Education, Bogolepov. The government, on its 
side, strove constantly to make existence still more unendurable ; 
hundreds of students were exiled, the press was forbidden to discuss 
almost 2,000 new subjects, in addition to innumerable old ones, all 
the repressive measures against meetings and discussions were doubly 
enforced, and rebellious university students were flogged and forced 
to enlist in the army as punishment. 

The year 1904 was one which saw a rapidly rising storm of 
opposition in all sections and among adherents of all parties. 
Branches of the Union of Liberation, previously mentioned, were 
formed in the provinces, and many of the Zemstvos. Tver in partic- 
ular, suffered for their views and propaganda. Pleve, as >linister 
of the Interior, used his utmost power of repression, m the ex- 
pressed belief that the opposition did not represent the general view 
of society, refused to sanction the re-election of Shipov at Moscow, 
though as leader and originator of the Zemstov movement the latter 
had done all he could to restrain action in legal and moderate chan- 
nels. In July Pleve was assassinated, one of the almost innumerable 
relentless bureaucrats who were killed by the terrorists of this period. 
His successor. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, resembled in many respects that 
Loris-Melikov of the reign of Alexander II, and begged for a policy 
of mutual "trust" between the people and the state. But the people 
were better organized than in 1880 as well as less disposed to trust the 
government that had so often betrayed it. The Union of Liberation 
together with other liberal leaders held a congress in St. Peters- 
burg and agreed on a series of resolutions, the so-called "eleven 
points", which were presented to the new minister. They were the 
same moderate democratic demands that had been made over and 
over again, but this time they were the official utterance of a sober 
and determined organization. None the less they were rejected, 
largely through the instrumentality of Pobiedonostsev and the Grand 
Dukes, but became the slogan of all the actively striving elements of 
the time, forming a basis for agreement between many classes and 
groups hitherto without any definite points of contact other than dis- 
satisfaction with the existing state of affairs. A "banquet move- 
ment" arose, and spread throughout Russia, a series of dinners at 
which professional men. lawyers, doctors, engineers and teachers 

97 



expressed entire agreement with the demands of the "eleven points". 
The government, as usual when alarmed, became irresolute, and 
for a few days showed a tendency to compromise, but a promising 
edict of December 25 was overthrown in two days and the demands 
of the Zemstvos declared contrary to the fundamental laws of the 
Empire, meetings were forbidden, and the Zemstvos cautioned to 
restrict their activity to affairs that properly lay within their prov- 
ince. (Kornilov. Russia Under Nicholas, chaps I, II. Zilliacus, chaps. 
XIII.-XVIII. Mavor, Vol. II, Book IV, chaps. IX-XII ; Book V, 
chaps. VII, VIII; Book VI, chaps I, IV, V, VII, X, XI, 
XIII, XIV.) 

The 1905 Revolution, and the "Constitntioial Regime". 

From the revolution of 1905 to the revolution of 1917 is perhaps 
the last period in the history of the Romanovs, and in it all the striv- 
ing and, hitherto, unsuccessful efforts of the opposition break the 
power of the autocratic state twice; the first time, only for the mo- 
ment; the second time, in 1917, perhaps for ever, for it seems unlike- 
ly that the "old Russia" will ever return. The whole reign of Nich- 
olas seems crowded with significant incident and activity, but this 
last period is, in many ways, the most crowded of all in the history 
of the country. 

The year 1905 began with a movement of the proletariat, under 
"Father" Gapon. a government agent, who had formed a Factory 
Workers' Society in Petersburg, under the governmental plan of 
directing the workers to purely economic questions under their own 
indirect supervision. But, as in other cases, the movement grew 
beyond the control of Gapon, and some 13,000 factory workers, 
whose demands for an eight hour day and better treatment were 
refused, decided to present a petition to the Emperor. Their proces- 
sion was fired on and some 500 killed, though they had been or- 
derly, and had not been led by revolutionists. This "Bloody Sun- 
day" had the effect of once again discrediting the government and 
turning the masses even more strongly to the bitterest of revolu- 
tionary methods and ideas, as well as leading to still further strikes, 
both in the factories and in the universities, where the students 
"struck" in sympathy. 

This was in January ; in March the government, seriously 
alarmed, resolved to compromise. The Tsar's message upon the 
appointment of Bulygin in place of Alirsky. and after the assassina- 
tion of Grand Duke Sergey, announced, "I am resolved henceforth, 
with the help of God, to summon the worthiest men elected by the 

98 



people for participation in the drafting and consideration of legis- 
lative measures." (Kornilov, vol. II, p. 302.) This, however, was 
no longer enough to satisfy the country, and the Zemstovs con- 
tinued their demands for a representative government full and free, 
and no mere share in "discussion." In May the Union of Unions 
under Milioukov was formed, uniting the liberals of the Zemstvos 
with the professional classes. The disasters of the Russian-Japan- 
ese War were now a fundamental element in the agitation and dis- 
trust throughout the country, and even further concessions on the 
part of the government were of no avail. Even the promise of a 
Duma could not hold back the disorder. Banks, railways, peasants, 
factory workers, clerks in the law courts, postal and telegraph em- 
ployees, employees of water and light plants, — one and all ceased 
to work, assembled, and came into open conflict with police and 
troops. Part of the Union of Unions and a section of Zemstvo work- 
ers formed the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), and in 
St. Petersburg was formed the Council of Workmen's Delegates, 
dominated by the revolutionaries. The government had lost con- 
trol, and even adopted the revolutionary tactics of the radicals, 
forming the Union of True Russian People, and the Black Hun- 
dreds or Black Gangs. Pogroms were the order of the day- di- 
rected by the government against radical and Jew, student and work- 
man, for they were all classed together by the government as ob- 
jectors to the polic}^ of the state. A manifesto of October, in spite 
of all this secret activitv of the government, announced that free- 
dom of speech, conscience and meeting would be granted, but not 
a representative assembly. A new strike was called for November 
for the final victory over the last reservation of the government, 
but lacked the unanimity of the one of the preceding month and 
broke down. The promises already given had satisfied many, and 
the nation was no longer fundamentally united, while the govern- 
ment was continuing its organization of reactionary forces. For 
the remainder of the year the revolution lost in strength, and the 
g^try and the more conservative middle class, alarmed at the 
violence of the radicals, turned to the government as the lesser of 
two evils, relied on its promises, and by their moral aid carried the 
government over the year to 1906, when the tide once again turned 
in favor of the state. 

With the return of the confidence and power of the govern- 
ment, the punishment meted out was indescribably severe. Every 
effort was made so to stamp out the very roots of radical activity 
and propaganda, that never again would even the semblance of a 

99 



revolution be possible. But such methods have never accomplished 
their purposes. The history of the period between the return to 
power of the government and the outbreak of the War in 1914 
parallels that of 1900 to the revolution of 1905 plus the added 
element of the attempt of the government to make the fulfillment 
of its promises of 1905 a matter of words rather than deeds. The 
promised Duma did indeed come to exist, but was handicapped and 
thwarted in every direction, and its elections tampered with. Into 
the details of this period we do not need to go, but their result was 
to bring the country once more to a regime of strikes (1911), with 
a Duma ('the fourth) openly censuring the government, and with 
armed conflicts in the streets. The progress of the War itself was 
but the final turning point in the struggle, and under the pressure 
of defeat and weakness, Nicholas II ushered out the Romanov 
dynasty. (Kornilov, Russia Under Nicholas II, chaps. II-IV; Ma- 
vor, vol. II, as above; Zilliacus, chaps. XVH, XVIII; Ivanov 
Razumnik, vol. II, chaps. VTII-IX.) 

Tlic Last Phase of Autocratic Education. 

In education, as in other matters, the reign of Nicholas is a 
continuation of that of Alexander III, with the addition of a more 
particular attention to elementary education, and an attempt, under 
social pressure, to organize the field of these schools more satis- 
factorily. But the end of the reign, complicated by the events of 
the Great War, leaves the main problems of education unsolved by 
any other standard than the policy of compromise which the gov- 
ernment, as usual, adopted. The program of the Soviet Minister 
of Education, which followed the Bolshevik success, has no con- 
nection with the official inheritance in the educational field, which 
the Romanovs left. It was to be a working out of the most radical 
of the tendencies -which the Tsar and his Ministry were most active 
in suppressing. 

The public interest in education, which had been characteristic 
of the period of the Zemstvo growth, and which had started under 
Alexander II, began to show itself also from 1890 on. New edu- 
cational journals were started, and the daily press again concerned 
itself with the eternal question of "reform in education." 

Primary education was the most pressing question, and received 
the first attention. The movement of the last reign to extend ele- 
mentary education, by whatever means possible, continued, both 
economic and humanitarian motives being combined, for the social 
workers and revolutionists were interested in the latter and the 

100 



government in the former. The general pubHc, too, had been im- 
pressed by the results of the famine of 1891-1892 and readily saw- 
that a little education and a few schools might well prevent the re- 
currence of such a condition. In 1894 the Educational Committee 
at St. Petersburg, which had been investigating the question of 
elementary "education, reported, in part, as follows, — "The intro- 
duction of universal (elementary) education appears to be one of 
the most important and the most pressing of the problems of our 
time. . . . General education ought not to be founded on a low 
level, i. e., on the existing degenerated and run-down schools. . . . 
For the working out of a plan for the introduction of general edu- 
cation the whole population of school age ought to be taken into 
account . . . General education ought to be founded on the prin- 
ciple of no fees. . . . The introduction, in our time, of compulsory 
education does not appear to be justified." (Quoted, in Russian, 
Kapterev, p. 83.) 

Delianov retired from the Ministry in 1896, and after a tempo- 
rary director for two years, Bogolepov assumed charge in 1898, 
bringing a varied experience in educational matters to bear on his 
problems. While Bogolepov introduced little or nothing that was 
new, his control, till his assassination in 1901, was characterized 
by activity, particularly in elementary education. As he saw the 
situation, an increase in schools was necessary, as many children 
were being neglected and many schools were overcrowded, but it 
was also necessary to have firm control of the schools, — private 
enterprise could not be permitted to do too much. He therefore 
encouraged the establishment of schools of the "1828" type, under 
direct control of the Minister of Education and in no way subject 
to the control of the Zemstvos, and also made easier the opening 
of so-called "Ministerial" Schools, by giving greater leeway to local 
officials and by increasing grants for them. During his tenure of 
office, the number of all primary schools increased some 25%. 
Due to the increase in the number of these two types of schools the 
share of the Government in providing elementary education was 
naturally proportionally larger, though all types of schools became 
more numerous. The payments of the government show a steady 
rise during the reign of Nicholas, and when the Zemstvo schools 
are also taken into account, it may readily be seen that no other 
period had witnessed such an extension of primary schooling. The 
following figures are instructive : In 1903, the Ministry of Edu- 
cation spent' R 5,784,672; in 1906, R. 8,286,672; in 1909, R. 
22,884,672; in 1910, R. 35,884.672: in 1916, R. 72,336.609. (For 

101 



first four, see Kapterev, p. 85; for last, see Russian Year Book, 
1916.) 

This growth of primary education naturally led to a still greater 
demand for teachers, who had always been more or less lacking in 
Russia, due, of course, to the fundamental poverty of institutions 
for training them, as well as to the restrictions which hedged them 
around, and the very poor pay granted for their services. To rem- 
edy part of this, Bogolepov created a pension fund in 1900. estab- 
lished temporary pedagogical courses throughout the country, and 
removed some of the restrictions, such as freedom of teachers' con- 
ferences. 

That the government was really sincerely interested in the 
question of elementary education and its problems, at least as it 
saw them, is shown by still another bill, proposed but not enacted 
in 1907. The provisions of this bill were framed to make education 
in the rural districts both easier, and more under the central con- 
trol. Many children of school age. particularly girls, did not attend 
the existing schools, because of the distance which separated them 
from the actual building, necessitating, often, that elementary school 
children live at the school for the week, returning only on Sundays 
This naturally raised all sorts of difHculties and problems of food, 
lodging, the mingling of the sexes and so on. and placed a tre- 
mendous burden on the teacher of the school who was virtually 
responsible for the children every hour of the school week, day 
and night. The bill recommended, in part (1), All children of 
both sexes ought to be able to go to a school with a full course, 
regularly organized, i. e.. four years in length, with not more than 
50 pupils to one teacher ... ; (2) Each school ought to serve a 
region of not more than three versts in radius. (Kapterev, Russian, 
p. 86.) That a law needed to be proposed for these requirements 
shows the actual condition of the schools. By 1910 about half of 
the Zemstvos had actually introduced general education, either com- 
pletely under their own control, or partly under control of the 
government. The whole sum spent on primary education, for 1910, 
was R. 7^^\Z,77}>. (Kapterev, p. ^Z.) For further statistics, see 
appendix. 

The question of making elementary education compulsary was 
one of the most debated of the period ; there is little doubt that the 
government was gradually coming to some solution of the difficul- 
ties connected with it. — largely financial and regional. But the 
War of 1914, as well as the troubles of the 1905-6 period, interfered. 
With the government, however, it would seem to have been almost 

102 



a purely economic motive that activated them, for the old ideas of 
class and station had by no means disappeared. In 1911 the ques- 
tion was submitted for consideration to the teachers of the elemen- 
tary schools, meeting at Moscow; some 85% thought compulsory 
education desirable; 8% necessary; 9% that it was possible, on 
certain conditions; 62% that it was possible, as conditions were. 
(Kapterev, p. 96.) But, as the author just quoted says, "A law 
for compulsory education is not the first moment but the last mo- 
ment in the 'Struggle against the ignorance of the people, the time 
for it will only come when it is shown, apart from all the acknowl- 
edged needs and existing measures for obtaining universal educa- 
tion, that it has not been attained simply because of the barbarous 
egoism, indifference and low ideals of parents. But Russia is yet 
far from this, . . ." (p. 101.) It is, from many points, an economic 
matter; the government would prosper, — but the individual parent 
does not want to spare the son or daughter from the work on the 
farm or in the house. 

In the field of secondary education one document of great im- 
portance was issued, the Circular of the Minister of Education for 
1899, under Bogolepov, summoning a conference of educational 
experts, to suggest reforms and ' necessary changes. The circular 
calls attention to the uselessness of the established system of sec- 
ondary education, the lack of physical and moral training, the too 
early specialization, the disorganization of the program the poor 
teaching and insufficient instruction in material knowledge and sci- 
ence, and the excessive predominance of the classics. The purpose 
of this Commission was not only to frame a theoretical program for 
reconstruction, but also to make the practical suggestions for the 
working out of the reforms, paying particular attention to physical 
and moral training, and the principles of Orthodoxy, Autocracy 
and Nationalism. 

The proposals when completed were submitted to still another 
Committee, but before they could be embodied in practice, Bogo- 
lepov was assassinated. • His successor. General Vannovski, took 
up the question, and summoned still another Commission, which ar- 
rived at very different conclusions from the first and second bodies, 
recommending, for example, the abolition of the dual system of 
gymnasia and the substitution of a single type school, with classics 
only as an elective in the upper grades, the removal of the classics 
from the list of admission requirements for the universities, and 
making the entrance into the gymnasium from the primary school 
easier. The Emperor confirmed these matters for a trial period of 

103 



a year, but other advice prevailed, and Vannovski resigned, being 
succeeded bv Professor Sanger, formerlv of the Moscow Univer- 
sity. The question of reform of the secondary schools was, by 
order, to be his chief concern, and temporary measures were adopted 
until such time as a new complete system should be worked out. 
By these temporary measures the status quo of the period before 
the series of Commisssions was, practically, maintained, with the 
addition, for the sake of the inculcation of the ideals of Orthodoxy, 
Autocracy and Nationalism, and the practice of moral training, of 
boarding houses, where pupils might, as a group, be brought under 
the proper influences. Greek, however, was made optional in the 
majority of the schools. 

The students, too, were beginning to take a hand in the dis- 
cussion, so that the so-called "smutnoe vremia" or period of trou- 
bles of the academic year 1905-1906 were preceded by a period of 
years in which the students of the gymnasia formed unions or clubs 
for the discussion both of political and academic matters, more or 
less in imitation of the university students and the revolutionists. 
The Unions of the south and the north were characteristically dif- 
ferent, the south being more violently political. For example, the 
Northern Union, formed in St. Petersburg in 1903-04, and con- 
tinuing to exist for some five years, framed its problems thus : "The 
raising of the intellectual and moral level of students, and the 
arousing in them, as a body, of a deep and living interest in the 
social and political activity of the day." The Union wished to 
aid the students "to work out a finished, scientifically founded, 
progressive, social-political Weltanschauung (lit. 'contemplation of 
the world.')" In 1903 the organization of the gymnasium students 
in the south formed the "Union of Youth" and a committee, in 
March of that year, made public the following resolution : "To form 
among the students of the middle schools such an organization 
which would prepare these young people . . . for the struggle for 
their rights ..." (See Kapterev for these and further details, 
pp. 61-62.) 

The year 1905 saw many and determined strikes on the part 
of both the university and the gymnasium students ; indeed, even 
the schoolboys of still lower rank entered into the general move- 
ment of protest against the government and into the expression of 
sympathy with the revolutionists and striking workmen. But the 
movement had other elements besides that of protest against the 
government in general. The students demanded, in agreement with 
the principles of the organizations mentioned above, reform in the 

104 



school system. But the return of strength and confidence of the 
government after the last strikes and the beginning of disorganiza- 
tion on the part of the revolutionists resulted in the same meas- 
ures of repression and the same return of bitter supervision in the 
schools as in the general conduct of the country. The reaction 
was terrible; between 1905 and 1909, the period of greatest re- 
action, there were over 45,000 suicides in Russia, the greatest num- 
ber, naturally, being among the intelligent and educated, and the 
greatest proportion being of people between 15 and 20 years of 
age. (Kornilov, vol. II, p. 332.) Nothing further was done ma- 
terially to alter the secondary school beyond the stage in which the 
regime of Sanger left it, though the number of pupils attending 
the gymnasia has constantly risen, except to make supervision 
stricter, in order to prevent the recurrence of tfte troubles of 
1905-06. 

The history of the universities of this period is much the same 
story of gradually a rising tide of rebellion, of subsequent revolt 
and bitter repression. The disorders broke out earlier in this field, 
were more frequent, and were suppressed with, perhaps, more sev- 
erity. But the vital questions were left just as much unsolved in 
the case of the universities as in the case of the rest of the educa- 
tional field, though here, as elsewhere, the number of students grew 
constantly throughout the period. That some radical change would 
have been inherently necessary after the War of 1914 is quite evi- 
dent, but the government did not survive to foster or suppress the 
growing power of the educated body of students and teachers. 

The universities, like the other parts of the system, suffered 
from the vacilating purposes and changing plans of the number of 
Ministers, for this period of Alexander is noted for the number 
of men who held the post of Minister of Education. Under Bogo- 
lepov, some additions to the field of the university work were made, 
— a new Faculty of Law at Tomsk, a new Faculty of Medicine at 
Odessa, and the establishment of the famous Oriental Institute at 
Vladivostok. But the serious student disorders in the universities 
during 1899 put an end to constructive work, and turned the at- 
tention of the government to the necessity of suppressing the or- 
ganizations which had grown up among the students. The Laws 
and Regulations for LTniversities expressly forbade any and every 
form of organization, but the students had formed them so much 
on the style of the secret revolutionary bodies that their strength 
and number had not been suspected. A quotation of some of the 
rules bearing on the subject will make clear the nature of the uni- 

105 



versity life which students were supposed to lead : "Students are 
considered as individual members (visitors) of the university and 
therefore no action on their part is permitted which bears a cor- 
porate character. On this account the presentation of addresses 
and petitions signed by several persons, the sending of deputations, 
or the exhibition of any notices whatever in the names of the stu- 
dents, are forbidden. N. B. — No notices may be put up without 
the signature of the inspector or his assistant. . •. . Within the 
buildings, courts, and grounds of the university the organization 
of students' reading rooms, dining or food clubs, and .also of the- 
atrical representations, concerts, balls, and other similar public as- 
semblies not having a scientific character, is absolutely forbidden. 
. . . Students are forbidden to hold any meetings or gatherings for 
deliberation in common on any matters whatsoever or to deliver 
public speeches, and they are likewise forbidden to establish any 
common funds whatsoever." (Quoted, Darlington, pp. 445-6.) 
Since the students did not obey these regulations the occasions of 
punishment and resistance were frequent, though they rose to per- 
haps the greatest height in 1899. For some three months, in that 
year, the trouble continued, the police even going so far as to flog 
the students with whips, in the streets of St. Petersburg. Two 
days later the students struck, declared the university "closed." 
and pledged themselves to remain away from the university until 
personal inviolability was granted to all students of both sexes. 
Throughout Russia some 13,000 students struck, and the Tsar is- 
sued an Ukaz ordering the strikers to be forcibly enlisted in the 
army regardless of their special privileges. Many professors were 
dismissed from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1900 a group ot 
about one thovisand students met in Kiev to discuss the situation, 
and upon the reporting of the occurrence by the rector, the uni- 
versity was surrounded by Cossacks and police, half the gathering 
arrested, almost two hundred drafted into the army and the rest 
expelled. Similar movements took place in all the university towns, 
the workmen often joining with the students. In St. Petersburg, 
on another occasion, seven students, among them a woman, were 
killed. It was one month after this affair that Bogolepov was 
killed by an ex-student. The student movement and the revolu- 
tionary movement became more and more affiliated and processions 
of students and workmen paraded up and down the city with the 
cry of "Doloi Samoderzhaviye," i. e., Down with the Aristocracy. 

As a consequence the government summoned the usual con- 
ference to consider the matter, but the only measures were addi- 

106 



tional precautions against the recurrence of the outbreak. The 
number of inspectors for the universities was increased to three 
times the former number, making about one inspector to each 150 
students, and students were restricted in their choice of universities. 
Exactly the same outbreaks took place in 1905-06" when some little 
measure of freedom was obtained, only to be abruptly taken away 
again in 1910 under Schwarz and by his successor Kasso. The 
year 1911 saw the same strikes and the same police methods. This 
time the government tried to solve the difficulty by a closer scrutiny 
of the university professors, more than a hundred of whom, the 
very best, resigned under pressure, and their places were taken by 
those "desirable politically" to the government. 

Thus the whole policy of the period, except in the field of 
elementary education, was one of coercion and suppression, with 
revolt against it. The only constructive work, that of the elemen- 
tary schools, was motivated by a desire to raise the productive pow- 
ers of the country, to which may be added, as another example of 
the same motive, a growth of technical schools and the creation 
(1896) of commercial and business schools and classes and 
courses in commercial knowledge. By 1904 this enterprise had 
grown very considerably, but naturally involved little or no dis- 
turbance or discussion. (Kapterev, chaps. IV, V, VI; Kornilov, vol. 
II, Nicholas II, chaps. II-IV; Darlington, pp. 150-160; Source 3, 
part IX, chaps. II-VI.) 



107 



CHAPTER X. 
The Transition to the Bolsheviki 

The Two Revolutions. 

The two streams of propaganda which we have seen through- 
out the course of the development of the opposition in Russia are 
found again to be rivals in the activities of the period of the Great 
War and the immediate period after it. The Bolsheviki, who were 
a portion of the party of the Marxian Social Democratic Labor Party, 
and the more conservative liberal leaders of the Zemstvo movement 
and the party for Constitutional reform, continued the struggle 
against the Tsar and autocracy, but not with the same aims and 
methods. It was the first success of the Constitutionalists that gave 
the opportunity for the later success of Lenin and the Bolsheviki. 
Into the details of the two revolutions it is not possible to go here, 
but a slight sketch of the chief events will make understandable 
the final triumph of the party of Lenin, as well as the basis of 
the educational decrees which his Minister of Education has issued. 

The disturbances of 1905-06 which we have sketched, though 
suppressed, broke out again in 1910, continuing, sporadically until 
1913-14, with protests against the Balkan Wars, militarism in gen- 
eral, as well as the old protest against the system of government 
and its methods. The consensus of opinion asserts that the year 
1914-15 would have seen a far wider and far more successful at- 
tempt to overthrow the government than had yet been made, but 
the beginning of the Great War, for the time being, turned the at- 
tention of all to external rather than internal events. The country, 
as a whole, with remarkable unanimity, and with astonishing patri- 
otism rallied to the defense of the country, regardless of class or 
creed, and Nicholas II probably never had a more united people 
than in the first few months of the War. The Bolsheviki and the 
Mensheviki and one or two other Socialist groups alone aostained 
from voting war credits in the Duma, though some of them sup- 
ported the War later on. It is also highly probable that the Bol- 
sheviki conspired against the government and the conduct of the 
War, in the very beginning, and several of the Bolsheviki members 

108 



of the Duma were arrested in November. Lenin, who had not'yet 
arrived in Russia, beheved that the defeat of Russia would be the 
best first step to the overthrow of the government. At a confer- 
ence held in Petrograd, as the capital was now called, it had been 
proven, according to the government, that the Bolsheviki element 
were about to circulate their doctrines among the army, urging 
that "from the standpoint of the "vorking-class and of the labor- 
ing masses of all the nations of Russia, the defeat of the monarchy 
of the Tsar and of his armies would be of extremely little conse- 
quence." From this, 'the members of parties holding such a view 
became known as "Porazhentsi," i. e., "Defeatists"; but this did 
not prove, as was claimed then and since, that they were in the pay 
of Germany. Perhaps some of them were, but this would have to 
be established on other grounds, for their position was quite un- 
derstandable. 

The majority of the Socialists, on the other hand, took quite 
the contrary point of view. The following passage from their 
Manifesto to the Laboring Class shows their attitude :• "We, the 
undersigned, belong to diiiferent shades of Russian Socialistic 
thought. We differ on many things, but we firmly agree in that 
the defeat of Russia in her struggle with Germany would mean her 
defeat in her struggle for freedom. . . ." (From the text of the 
whole Manifesto, quoted by Spargo, pp. 95-100.) 

With the Porazhentsi, however, another element was working, 
— not in open and friendly agreement, but with the same purposes 
at heart, — the so-called Germanophiles. It must not be forgotten 
that Catherine the Great was a German and that five out of six 
succeeding Tsars married German wives, and that Nicholas the 
Second was almost purely German in blood. Moreover, the bureau- 
cracy had been started with German aid and enterprise, and has 
always contained a very considerable percentage of officials whose 
greatest inheritance was German. In the Great War as in the 
wars with Turkey and with Japan, official inability as well as offi- 
cial dishonesty had much to do with failures in military efficiency, 
and in evoking public and revolutionary action. After the early 
successes of the Russian army this element did all it could to dis- 
organize afifairs, and succeeded admirably in so doing. So badly were 
matters going in the army that the municipalities and the Zemstvos 
formed unions to do the work and furnish the supplies that the gov- 
ernment was failing to provide, and both founded hospitals, feeding 
stations, transportation service and manufacturing centers, as well 
as furnishing tents, boots, socks and numerous other things which 

109 



were missing. With the spirit and heart of Russia and the Russian 
people there was nothing wrong, — circumstances alone, in the form 
of a corrupt bureaucracy were against them, and their work was, 
as usual, hindered and forbidden. Even the Duma was ordered 
indefinitely suspended (September, 1915.) The Black Hundreds 
were active, public aid was crushed, and the belief prevailed through- 
out the country that the court and the bureaucracy were planning 
a separate peace. 

The year 1916 was a continuation, on a larger scale, of the 
activities, the plots, the Manifestos and the disorders of the pre- 
vious year. When the Duma met in November, the country was 
ripe for revolt, awaiting only the action and the leadership of the 
Duma. Still the matter hung fire. The action of the government 
in appointing the worst of reactionaries to the most important posi- 
tions, is good ground for believing that it really wished for a 
revolution as the easiest solution of the external and internal dif- 
ficulties. The opening of the Duma for 1917 was postponed twice. 
The country was disorganized by strikes, famine and terror. Once 
more the government tried "police socialism" and endeavored to 
provoke sufficiently serious riots and disorder to necessitate the use 
of troops, and thus round up the active and dangerous elements in 
the cities, — but, as had always been the case when this method was 
tried, the matter got beyond control. This time the troops sympa- 
thized with the rioters, took care not to hurt them, and in the end, 
after a few days, openly joined with them. The government had 
lost the last means for its defense. On March 15th the Tsar re- 
signed, and Prince Lvov formed a temporary government, to keep 
control until such time as the Constituent Assembly should meet 
and decide on the candidacy of Grand Duke Michael, the brother 
of the Tsar, whom he had named as his successor after first con- 
sidering his own son. Michael refused, however, to reign with- 
out the sanction of a representative body. All this was the fruition 
of the first revolution of 1917, a purely political afifair in which 
the people played little part, and which was accomplished 
largely by the educated and propertied men of the Duma, who did 
not represent, as a provisional government, the main masses of 
the country. 

From March on. a second revolution, destined to overtake and 
overthrow the first, was in process of formation. This was to be 
a social revolution, a revolution of the lower classes, and led by 
men of an entirely different school of thought, with socialistic and 
Marxian ideology in place of that of a representative democracy. 

110 



The Provisional Government at once proceeded to issue Manifestos, 
removing limitation of class and race and guaranteeing freedom of 
speech, press and religion. But it could not satisfy the masses, who 
had come to the point of distrusting all kinds of government other 
than their own local and class methods. In the meantime the Coun- 
cil of Workmen"'s and (later) Soldiers' Delegates, which had been 
formed in February. 1917. in imitation of the similar bodies of 
1905-1906. had been growing in strength and turning from the 
Mensheviki doctrines and control which had first characterized it 
to Bolsheviki principles, so that its Manifestos graduallv changed 
from a demand for a Constituent Assembly to open defiance of the 
government of Prince Lvov. This Council was the basis of the 
Soviet form of government, the word "Soviet" meaning Council. 
Little by little the power of the Councils grew and the Provisional 
Government weakened. The period of Soviet Russia was at hand. 

In April Lenin and several other Bolsheviki leaders arrived in 
Russia, bringing with them a definitely worked-out plan of cam- 
paign, one based on purely economic and class ideas and demanding 
the absolute destruction of all capitalistic machinery, whether of 
state or society, and appealing to and for the sake of the prole- 
tariat. "Democracy" in Lenin's phrase was a "bourgeois concep- 
tion," and in his scheme for the reconstruction of Russia, there 
was little of what the Western world calls by that name. Indeed, 
in strict accord with this belief, the party of the Bolsheviki soon 
ceased to call themselves a section of the Social Democratic Party, 
of which they were the actual descendants, choosing instead the 
name of "Communist Party." What Lenin advocated was a purely 
Soviet form of government, in which the working class and the 
"poorest," i. e., property-less, peasantry would have power and con- 
stitute delegates. In May, Trotsky arrived in Petrograd, like Lenin, 
an old revolutionist. 

From May until November there was constant playing for 
supreme power between the Provisional Government, with Ker- 
ensky as Premier, and the Soviets under Trotsky and Lenin, end- 
ing, on the 7th of that month, with the utter triumph of the latter 
and the flight and escape of Kerensky. The remainder of the 
Provisional Government were placed under arrest, and the "dic- 
tatorship of the proletariat" began, with Lenin as President of the 
Council of People's Commissaries, as the new government was 
called, and Trotsky as Commissioner of Foreign Affairs. (Spargo, 
pp. 76-208; Reed, chaps. I-IV ; Lenin, Soviets at Work.) 

Ill 



The Educational Philosophy of the Bolsheviki. 

It is seemingly possible to speak only of the educational phil- 
osophy of the Soviet Republic, for we have no evidence, at present, 
beyond the First xA.nnual Report of Commissar of Education Lu- 
nacharsky, for 1918, of what has been done in contradistinction to 
what is being planned. Of the latter material there is sufficient to 
show a radically different system of education from that of the 
autocracy, and one which differs, moreover, in many particulars, 
from the educational philosophy of any other country. Reed's book 
as well as The Liberator, The Modern School, The Nation and The 
New Republic supply many of the documents, but the main source 
is the, at present, unpublished material of the Soviet Bureau of 
New York, from which most of the following is drawn. 

The educational system and philosophy of the Bolsheviki party 
is in absolute accord with its economic and class ideas, and reflects 
the doctrines of Lenin and his party in every respect. As far as 
possible the system will be presented in the words of the original 
documents. 

"In a country kept artificially in ignorance, the task of educa- 
tion could not find full development on the day following the Peo- 
ple's Revolution, which transferred the power to the toiling masses. 
It is evident, however, that neither the conquest of political power 
nor the attainment of the position of economic mastery of the coun- 
try, could be lasting, if the people should not also attain knowledge. 
Only a high level of public education could make possible a con- 
scious governing-by-the-people, — which should embrace large 
masses. During the interval an important role had to be played by 
the Intelligentsia, which had enjoyed the odious privilege of ex- 
clusive erudition, and was considered in Russia to be m sympathy 
with the people. In the time of the 1905-06 revolution, Kautsky 
pointed out with hope the. fact that in Russia the task of the work- 
ing class would be made easier by its sincere ally, the revolutionary 
Intelligentsia. Kautsky did not foresee at that time that, at the 
moment of the concrete realization of his dreams, at the hour of 
the social revolution, even he himself would turn enemy to the 
proletarian vanguard. 

"However, there is no evil without its accompanying good. 
The abominable sabotage on the part of the majority of the Rus- 
sian Intelligentsia, and in particular, of the so-called socialist In- 
telligentsia, proved an excellent lesson for the proletariat, laying 
stress upon the unalterable necessity for the proletarian to acquire 

112 



real knowledge immediately — for himself, so far as possible, and 
in full measure for his children. 

"The leadership in this important task has fallen to the Com- 
missariat for Public Instruction " (Annual Report, Lunacharsky, 
for 1918. Liberator, May. 1919.) 

The organization and control of education under the Soviets 
is naturally different from the system of the Tsars; the same re- 
port goes on to describe this new method of organization, — "At the 
head of the Commissariat stands the People's Commisar and his 
assistant, and the staff, consisting at present of seven people, which 
decides all current affairs that are outside the competence of the 
branch superintendents. Basic problems are solved by a State 
Board of Education, which, besides the members of the staff and 
the branch superintendents, includes also representatives from the 
centers of the Soviet Government, from the labor unions and the 
workers' cultural organizations, and from that part of the body of 
the teachers which is taking a stand of loyal co-operation with the 
Soviet power. 

"Finally, problems of especial importance, for instance, regard- 
ing a school reform, are considered at the All-Russian Conven- 
tions, the first of which, well attended, harmonious, and imbued 
with communistic ideals, took place in Moscow, in the month of 
August (1918). 

"In the provinces the work of public education is being di- 
rected by the Departments of Public Instruction attached to the 
provincial (gubernia), county (ouyezd), city, and lastly, the volost, 
Executive Committees. The provincial, county, and city depart- 
ments, corresponding to the Central staff, have attached to them 
Councils of Public Instruction corresponding, in the provinces, to 
the State Board." (Lunacharsky, report for 1918.) 

The Commissar has also unified the school system : **In place 
of schools of all varieties and kinds — which formerly were sharply 
divided into a lower school for the plain people, and the middle 
school for the privileged classes and the well-to-do people, and div- 
ided, further into schools for boys and those for girls, into tech- 
nical and classical secondary schools, general and special school 
institutions — the Commissariat has introduced the Unified Workers' 
School, covering the entire length of the course of instruction. 

"The unity of this school should be understood in two ways : 
first, that the class divisions are abolished and the school adopts a 
continuous grade system. In principle, every child of the Russian 
Republic enters a school of an identical type and has the same 

113 



chances as every other to complete its higher education. Second, 
that up to the age of 16, all specialization is omitted. It is self- 
understood that this does not hinder the adoption of the principle 
of individual attention, and of the greatest possible variety of forms 
mside each school. But specialization in the full meaning of the 
word is permitted only after attaining the age of 16, and upon the 
foundation of a general and poly technical education acquired al- 
ready. The school is declared an absolutely lay institution ; dip- 
lomas, in their character of certificates granting special rights, are 
abolished ; the classical languages are declared non-obligatory. 

"This school, unified in principle, is divided into two grades : 
the first of five years' duration, and the second of four years. This 
nine years' course is declared to be in principle obligatory. 

"Our school will be in fact accessible to all. To attain this 
end, not only are all tuition fees abolished, but the children are 
provided with gratuitous hot food, and the poorest children with 
shoes and clothing. It goes without saying that all school manuals 
are ofifered to the children free of charge by the school." (Same 
report. ) 

After some discussion of the difficulties involved and the meth- 
ods of meeting them, I.unacharsky proceeds to the statement of 
some of the fundamental aims of the school, and particularly in 
■'Work as the Basis of Education." 

"The labor character of the school consists in the fact that 
Jabor. pedagogical as well as, in particular, productive labor, wil) 
be made a basis of teaching. 

"In the primary schools it will be mostly work within the 
walls of the school : in the kitchen, in the garden, in special work- 
shops, etc. The labor must be of a productive character — in this 
way, in particular, that the children serve the needs of the com- 
munity so far as their strength will permit them. . . . 

"In the secondary schools the productive and the broad social 
character of labor is emphasized still more sharply. We deal here 
with children from thirteen years up. From this age there is pos- 
sible an easy but real labor outside of the school ; the participation 
in factory or shop work, the helping in serious farm work, the co- 
operation in some business enterprise, the co-operation in some 
social or state undertaking. From this age up we are uniting the 
labor of the children, the participation of the child in the social 
struggle for existence, and its development with its education. The 
school, without losing sight of the youngster, protecting it from 
harm, turning each act of its labor to the benefit of its general 

114 



physical and mental development, will lead it into the very tanojle 
of social productive work." (Same report.) 

The report, which covers only some five double-column maga- 
zine pages, then deals with City and Country School, Salaries, Edu 
eating the Teacher, Advanced Education, Libraries. Music, Art and 
the Theatres, for all these come within the field of activities of 
the Minister of Education under the Soviet regime. The report 
of the All-Russian Teachers' Congress, referred to by Lunacharsky, 
should be consulted in this connection. It is reported in "The Mod- 
ern School," for November, 1918. 

The documents of the Soviet Bureau of New York City, cov- 
ering sdme fifty printed pages of highly interesting material, give 
greater details of organization, procedure and philosophy. Docu- 
ment No. 3, the paper of Commissary Lepeshinsky, read at the 
First Congress, contains some passages well worth quoting: "It 
has become customary to accuse the new government of indiffer- 
ence toward the cultural values of the past, and particularly, of 
disrupting the schools. Such an accusation is obviously wrong. 
In so far as the school stands for wrong principles, breeding privil- 
eges and a spirit of utilitarianism, and is a servant of the ruling 
classes, it has been destroyed. Such a school system was an in- 
strument to befog the consciousness of the masses and crippled the 
children physically and spiritually. The destruction of the old 
school system, as an integral part of the whole social structure of 
the past was brought about not by a group of individuals, but by 
the elemental force of life itself. History had paved the way for 
such a destruction, and it had become a pressing necessity of the 
present revolutionary period." The paper then goes on to cover 
much the same ground as the report of Lunacharsky, with the ad- 
dition of a stress on the creative and artistic elements in the child 
and the curriculum, and an insistence on the necessity of an in- 
herent relationship between the activities of school and life. There 
has quite evidently been a considerable study and absortion of the 
doctrines of education current in Europe and America during the 
last thirty years, although no direct references are made. But it 
seems to be a fact, not at present supportable by documentary evi- 
dence, that American schools and American school and college 
books have been both the admiration and the ideal of the radical 
Russian educators, many texts having been translated into Russian. 
It is quite possible that some little of this enthusiasm has been sup- 
planted by criticism on the part of the present educators in Russia, 
because of the believed connection of our culture with a spirit too 
capitalistic and mercenar}'. 

115 



Document No. 7 of the Soviet Bureau opens up the interesting 
question of schools for workmen, being the report of an issued 
statement of the Soviet of Railroad Workers' Deputies regarding 
the opening of schools for the teaching of drawing, painting, de- 
signing, mathematics and modeling for "members of the Soviet and 
their children. Documents No. 9 and No. 10 go into the question 
of servants and service, showing the social principles which are to 
underly the school system of the Soviets, — the "socialistic schools." 
The same principles of activity for life, for productivity, for social 
service is inherent in them all. 

It would be possible to quote many more pages of extracts 
from these documents, but enough has been given to show two 
things : first, the absolute break with the spirit, the organization 
and the methods of the old education under the autocracy ; second, 
the essentially socialistic character of the new system, which, en- 
tirely apart from any judgment of the political aims and methods 
of the Bolsheviki, and apart, too, from any estimate of the present 
existence of schools embodying these principles, may surely be 
considered to meet, far more adequately, the provisions for a sys- 
tem of education, tentatively laid down in the introduction to this 
sketch. It will be of the greatest interest and value to watch, if 
the Bolsheviki regime continues, the application and the working out 
of these radically new principles in Russian education. 



llfi 



APPENDIX 

Statistics of Population, Literacy, Religions, School 

Attendance, Budgets, Etc. 



117 



SOME GENERAL STATISTICS OF POPULATION, 
RELIGIONS AND LITERACY. 

(A) Chief Races in Percentages: 



u 
nJ 

-4-' 

• — y^ tn </> 

= 3 O .S g 

C^ H Ph U. h^ 

European Russia.... 80.0 4.9 L2 3.6 4.0 

By Vistula Provinces 6.7 0.1 71.8 0.1 13.5 

Caucasus 34.0 20.2 0.3 0.1 0.4 

Siberia 81.0 8.3 0.5 1.1 0.5 

Central Asia 8.9 85.5 0.1 0.2 0.1 

Finland 0.2 86.7 ... 

Whole Empire 65.5 10.6 6.2 4.5 3.9 

(Russian Year Book, 1916.) 



c 


u 




*-• 


c 












CS 


rt 




















a 


03 


<u 


(fi 


c 


Q 


!« 




p 






<u 


M 


u. 


-C 


<U 


u 




H 

U 


C 
O 


4-> 


hJ 


a 


U 


u 


< 


^ 


O 


3.0 


1.4 


.. 


.. 


0.1 


0.2 


1.6 


3.3 


4.3 










0.2 


0.1 


0.6 


14.5 


11.7 


12.0 


0.2 


5.9 


0.2 


0.1 




< . > 


. . . 


6.2 


2.1 


... 


0.1 


... 


... 


0.1 


0.2 


4.8 



13.0 



0.1 



2.4 1.6 1.1 0.9 0.9 0.4 2.0 



(B) Chief Religions in Percentages: 

Roman Pro- Non- 

Ortho- Moham- Cath- tes- Christ'sChrist's 
dox. medans. olic. tants. Jews (other) (other) 

European Russia 83.58 3.82 4.65 3.30 4.07 0.24 0.34 

By Vistula Provinces 7.16 0.05 74.32 4.46 14.01 

Caucasus 50.94 34.54 0.47 0.61 0.63 12.49 0.32 

Siberia 89.97 2.20 0.60 0.28 0.60 0.01 6.34 

Central Asia 9.18 90.29 0.17 0.12 0.16 0.06 0.02 

Finland 1.90 98.00 0.10 

Empire 69.90 10.83 8.91 4.85 4.05 0.96 0.50 

These figures would seem to indicate a close connection between race 
and religion. (Compare with Table A.) 

(Russian Year Book, 1916.) 



(C) Distribution of Population, 1913: 

Total Rural Town Rural 

Area in Total per sq. per sq. Pop. Pop. 

sq. versts Inhab's verst verst. Pet. Pet. 

European Russia ....... 4,250,575 125,683,800 29.6 25.6 13.2 86.8 

By Vistula Provinces ... 99,691 11,960,500 120.0 90.8 23.3 76.7 

Caucasus 412,311 12,512,800 30 3 26.3 13.1 86.9 

Siberia 10,996,346 9,788,400 0.9 0.8 11.6 88.4 

Central Asia 3,110,624 10,957,400 3.5 3.0 13.6 86.4 

Finland 286,041 3,196,700 11.2 9.5 15.1 84.9 

Empire 19,155,589 174,099,600 9.1 7.8 14.2 85.8 

BUT, in the Government of Petrograd 72.3% live in towns, and in 
Moscow Government 49.8%. These are extreme. 

(Russian Year Book, 1916.) 

118 ■ 



(D) Occupations in Percentages: 



>, 






European Russia ... 1.4 .8 .7 4.2 1.9 74.9 9.7 1.7 3.7 1.0 

By Vistula Provinces 2.0 2.7 .5 10.2 2.9 56.6 1S.4 1.7 6.7 1.3 

Caucasus 1.1 1.3 .6 4.2 1.7 78.8 6.5 1.5 3.2 1.1 

Siberia 1.1 1.1 .4 3.9 1.5 80.2 7.6 1.2 2.1 .9 

Central Asia 7 .8 .4 3.1 .5 82.8 6.5 .9 3.4 .9 

Empire 1.4 1.0 .6 4.6 1.8 74.6 9.6 1.6 3.8 1.0 

Finland ? ? ? 

(Russian Year Book, 1916.) 

(E) Statistics of Illiteracy and School Attendance: 

Percent of Whole Population 
Whole Population Of Those Over 9 Being Taught (1912) 

European Russia 77.1 70.0 5.46 

By Vistula Provinces .... 69.5 59.0 4.49 

Caucasus 87.6 83.0 ** 

Siberia 87.7 84.0 3.68 

Central Asia 94.7 94.0 2.19 

Empire ....: 79.0 73.0 4.99 

Finland .... 7.19 

**(Pre-Caucasus 4.91, Trans-Caucasus 2.98) 

Out of a total (1912) of 8,030,088 scholars— 

6,697,385 or 83.4% attended elementary schools. 
467,558 or 5.8% attended secondary schools. 

251,732 or 3.1% attended special elementary and secondary schools. 
68,671 or .9% attended higher educational establishments. 
544,742 or 6.8% attended private schools, foreign church schools and 
various non-Christian schools of religious character. 
(Russian Year Book, 1916.) 

The figures of the second table of the preceding page have been some- 
what differently arranged by the Statesman's Year Book for 1918, but are 
in very close agreement. >?Tie rearrangement is as follows : 

Students attending the various types of schools^ 

(1912) Totally, of High Middlle Special' Primary Total No. 

all schools Schools Schools Schools Schools Students 

European Russia .. 95,381 58,370 373,746 196,279 5,523,143 6,151.538 

Poland 7,022 4,674 23,376 19,022 291,931 339,003 

Ciroaucasia 2,635 8,896 3,571 165,410 177,877 

Transcaucasia 2,548 188 12,735 4,451 127,657 145,031 

Siberia 6,245 2,520 21,205 9,299 308,247 341,271 

Central Asia 8,693 11,773 4,416 95,785 111,9^ 7«f 

GRAND TOTAL... 122,524 65,752 451,731 237,038 6,512,173 7,266,694 

119 



To this total of 7,266,694 must be added : 

Pupils of lay or religious Private schools 206,961 

Schools for blind, deaf and dumb 958 

Non-Christian religious schools 329,585 

Not classified in all above 233 91 1 



Final Grand Total 



8,038,109 



The totj^I as given on preceding page for 1912 by the Russian Year 
Book was 8,030,088, a fairly close agreement. 

'Exclusive of the cities of Petrograd, Kronstadt and Baku, as well as 

the governments of Warsaw and Tiflis and the Province of Kamchatka. 

''Middle and Primary Special Schools. 

(F) Statistics of University Attendance: 

There are ten universities in Russia with the following distribution of 
students and faculties of study: 

^ Approximate Attendance 

1912 1905 

Moscow 9,942 5 489 

Petrograd 8,446 4,508 

Kieff 4,098 3,003 

Kharkofif 5,274 1,660 

Dorpat' (Yuriefif) 2.749 1,766 

Warsaw^ 1.556 1,556 

Kazan 3.484 1,2SS 

Odessa 3,193 2,066 

Tomsk 1,347 779 

Saratov I97 (Founded 1909) 



40,286 22,082 

'Removed to Rostov on the Volga. 
^Removed to Saratov on the Volga. 

(Darlington and Russian Year Book 1916) 

Thus, in 1912, there were 40,286 students and in 1905, 22,082 plus 1 167 
auditors, total 23,249. 

These were distributed as follows : 

1911 1905 

Jurisprudence 15,254 9,063 

Physico-math 9,859 5,842 

Medical 9,385 5,144 

Hist-Philolog 3,384 1,619 

Oriental Lang 184 267* 

Divinity 126 147** 

*(Petrograd only?) 
**(Dorpat only? Lutheran) 

120 



The religion of these students was as follows: (1911) 

Greek Catholic 27,605 

Jewish 3,602 

Roman Catholic 2,768 

(Darlington and Kiissian Year Book, 1916) 

In addition to the above universities there are three others founded 
recently for which statistics of attendance are not at present available. 
These are : 

Shaniavsky (General Alphonse), founded 1908 (?) by funds from the 
General after whom it is named. 

Women's University at Petrograd, founded 1916. (With power to confer 
the doctorate.) 

Perm University, founded 1917. 

Total number of University students January 1, 1914 39,027 

(Statesmen's Year Book, 1918) 

^ ,_,^ Roubles 

(G) Educationai^ Budget for 1916: Distributed. 

Ministry of Education 165,159,780 

(a) Scientific Societies 2,868,760 

(b) Universities 10,687,760 

(c) Secondary and Special 3S,477J37 

(d) Primary 72,336,609 

(e) Teaching Stafif 3,686,158 

(f) Buildings and Repairs 11,697,223 

Ministry of Interior 446,435 

Holy Synod Church Schools 22,152,766 

Ministry of Finance (Art and Education) 132,328 

Ministry of Justice 967.977 , 

Ways of Communication 1,056,856 

Commerce and Industry (Science and Education) 4,586,724 

Ministry of Agriculture 9,380,975 

Ministry of War 20,864,803- 

Ministry of Marine 2,331,803 

Grand Total 246,580,415 

Rouble in normal times is about $0.50. 
(Russian Year Book, 1916.) 

General, Remarks in Explanation of Above Budgets : 

The present and past organization of education in Russia has been in 
the hands not only of the Ministry of Education, but also subject to the 
control of other Ministries. In general, the Ministry of Education (Public) 
has had control of what are called institutions of "general" education,— 

121 



whereas the so-called "special" institutions have been under the supervision 
of those particular Departments of State most interested in their develop- 
ment and success. 

Thus, the universities, gymnasia, pro-gymnasia, real schools, and a 
part (minor %) of the primary schools are administered by the Ministry 
of Public Education, (Ministerstvo Narodnago Prosvestcheniia). The 
theological academies and seminaries are under the Holy Synod, commercial 
schools under Ministry of Finance, engineering schools under Ministry of 
Ways of Communication, etc. But the Ministry of Public Instruction has 
also control of most of the intermediate and primary technical and trade 
schools and some places of "general" education are not under its control. 
More detail of this will be given under the separate treatment of the several 
types of schools. The following table will give an idea of the administration 
of primary schools. 



(H) Administration of Primary Schools, 1898: 

Ministry of Schools Teachers Scholars 

Public Instruction 37,046 84,121 2,650,058* 

Holy Synod 40,028 67,907 1,476,124* 

War 848 1,058 46,420 

Interior 553 1,102 20,510 

Department of Institutions of 

Empress Maria 153 210 5,097 

Imperial Philanthropic Society... 40 179 2,822 

Court and Domains 23 63 1,599 

Finance 4 12 237 

Marine 4 ? ' 379 

TOTAL 78,699 154,652 4,203,246 

*In 1904, under control of the Ministry of Public Instruction were 
3,200,835 children, and under the Holy Synod, 1902. 1,782,883. 

(Quoted by Darlhu/ton as from the official statements of the Ministry of 
Public Instruction.) 

To supplement the preceding table (H), the Statesman's Year Book for 
1918 gives the following figures as from the Census of 1911 : 
Control of Elementary Schools, — January, 1911: 

Schools Teachers Scholars 

Ministry of Public Instruction .... 59,682 130,019 4,186,078 

Holy Synod 37,922 66,525 1,793,429 

All others 2,691 6,729 201,003 

Total 100,295 203,273 6,180,510 

A study of Table (H) brings out the following — 

Schools % Teachers % Scholars % 

Ministry of Public Instruction 47.1 54.4 63.0 

Holy Synod 50.9 43.9 35.1 

All other 2.0 1.7 1.9 

122 



ALSO of all above schools 1,785 or 2.3% were primary schools for 
adults, attended by 89,045 persons, men and women. 

ALSO in the Russian Primary Schools : 

As a whole, there is one teacher for each 27.2 scholars 

Ministry of Public Instruction, one teacher for each 31.5 scholars 

Holy Synod, one teacher for each 22. scholars 

All other, one teacher for each 29.4 scholars 

ALSO, the average number of scholars in each Primary School is : 
In all Russia, 53.4; Ministry of Public Instruction, 71.5; Holy Synod, 36.9; 
All others, 47.4. 

Of the total of 4,203,246 pupils of the* above table for the year 1898, 
75% were males and 25% females. (Approximate.) Of the total of 76,914 
schools attended by children, 90% were in the country and only 10% in the 
towns. 

(DarlhigtOH.) 

Still later and more official figures are given for the Primary Schools 
(under the M. P. E. only) in an article in the Review of Reviews for July, 
1916. This purports to be extracts from the Report of the Ministry of 
Public Education of its activity from 1911 to 1915. In comparing these 
figures with those of the preceding two tables it must be remembered that 
here we are speaking of the primary schools of one Ministry only. This 
report states that on January 1, 1915, there were 80,801 elementary schools, 
71,795 in towns and 9,006 rural. This is an increase of 32.3% since 1911, 
and several times the increase in % of population. The number of pupils 
in these schools on the same date was 5,942,000, an increase of 35.7% over 
those of 1911. (Given as 4,411,000.) The increase of girl pupils in rural 
districts was 47%. For these schools there were, in 1915, 146,000 teachers, 
an increase of 38.6%, giving 40.7 pupils per teacher. In 1911, the ratio of 
male to female teacher was 43.5%, but in 1915 only 37%, showing a gain 
in the proportionate number of women teaching in the public elementary 
schools under the Ministry of Public Education. This later ratio becomes 
30% in those governments with Zemstvos, and 56% in those without. 

Statistics of Middt.e Schools, January, 1914 (St's Year Book. 1918) 

No. of Schools No. of Pupils. 

441 Gymnasia 147,751 

29 Pro-Gymnasia 4,359 

284 Real Schools 80,800 

33 Normal Schools 1,249 

122 Normal Seminaries 19,190 

837 Girls Gymnasia 341 ,637 

92 Girls Pro-Gymnasia 11,940 

29 Cadet Corps 29,646 

35 Gymnasia of Empress Marie (1912) 17,166 

34 Institutions of Empress Marie (1912) 9,562 

57 Seminaries (1913) 22,311 



123 



BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

Russian and English References. 

Sources, Secondary, and Miscellaneous Material. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(Books are referred to in text by their name or serial number. Russian 
titles have been given in English, and their nature indicated by the sign, 
(Russ). Books are classified, as far as possible, into Sources, General 
Histories, Secondary Educational Material, Miscellaneous.) 

SOURCES 

(1) Reports of the Ministry of Public Education (Russ.) 

1851, 1852, 1854, 1856 

1869 

1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876 

1879 to 1901 inclusive. 

(2) Survey of the Activities of the Ministry of Public Education, 1881 

to 1894, under Alexander III. (Russ.) 

(3) Historical Outline of the Activities of the Ministry of Public Educa- 

tion, 1802 to 1902. (Russ.) 

(4) Les Plans et les Statuts par Catherine II. Amsterdam 1775. 

(5) Collection of Materials for the History of Education in Russia, 4 

vols. 1783 to 1807. (Russ.) 1893. 

(6) Status des Gymnases et des Pro-Gymnases, 1871. 

(7) Status des Ecoles Reales, 1872. 

(8) Statuts des Ecoles Urbaines et des Ecoles Normales d'Instructeurs 

pour les Ecoles Urbaines, 1872. 

(9) La Russie a la Fin du XIX Siecle. Instruction Publique. 1900. 

(10) The Russian Ministry of Public Instruction at the World's Colum- 

bian Exposition, 1900. 

(11) Apergu de I'Enseignment Superieur en Russie. 1900. 

(12) Abrege des Plans d'Etudes des Etablissements d'Instruction Second- 

aire et des Ecoles Primaires. 1900. 
(The above (except No. 4) have been issued by the Ministry of Public 
Education and may be said to constitute the "official" Sources.) 

(13) Falbork and Tcharnolusky. Statistics of Elementary Public Instruc- 

tion in Russia. (Russ.) St. P. 1900. 

(14) "Nestor", French translation by Louis Leger, Paris, 1884. Chief 

source for Russian history to 1100. 

(15) "Chronicle of Novgorod", English translation Michell, Forbes and 

Beazley, London, 1914. Chief source, 1100-1450. 

124 



(16) Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, particularly 1885, Part 1, 

Penal Code; 1899, Vol 9, Laws of Society; 1893, Vol 11, Part 
I, Regulations of the Scientific Institutions and Public Schools 
under the Ministry of Public Instruction ; and supplements, 
1902, Part II, 1912, Part V; 1912, Part VI. (Russ.) 

(17) Tolstoy. L. N. Pedagogical Articles. Boston, 1904. Essays on the 

philosophy of education, and reports of his school. 

(18) Pobyedonostsefif, K. P. Reflections of a Russian Statesman. 

London, 1898. This is an incomplete translation of the fol- 
lowing title. 

(19) . Moscow Collection (of Essays), Moscow, 1897. (Russ.) 

The incarnation of the reactionary thought of the last gen- 
eration. 

(20) Sack, A. J. The Birth of the Russian Democracy. New York, 1919. 

3rd edition. Collection of documents. 

(21) Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information on Soviet Russia. 

From March 3rd, 1919. 

(22) Struggling Russia, a weekly bulletin issued by the Bureau of Infor- 

mation on Russia (anti-Bolshevik). From March 22, 1919. 
Documents and articles. 

(23) The files of The Liberator, The Nation, The New Republic and a few 

numbers of other magazines have contained material bearing 
on conditions in Russia. Much of this has been or is being col- 
lected for publication. The Soviet Bureau, for instance, is 
about to issue a full collection of the educational decrees, 
educational philosophy, and reports of the Bolshevik govern- 
ment. These have been consulted. 

(24) Russia Documents, Constitution, etc. American Association for 

International Conciliation. New York, 1909. 

GENERAL HISTORIES 

(51) Mavor, J. The Economic History of Russia. 2 vols. London, 1914. 

Detailed treatment of economic and political evolution. 

(52) Kluchevsky, V. O. History of Russia. 4 vols. Moscow, 1910. 

(Russ.) A standard work, with extracts of sources. 

(53) Kornilov, A. Modern Russian History. 2 vols. New York, 1916. 

From Catherine to the present. Good treatment of education. 

(54) Solovev, S. M. History of Russia from Ancient Times. 29 vols. 

(Russ.) St. Petersburg. Copius quotations of old sources. 

(55) Beazley, R., etc. History of Russia. Oxford, 1918. Excellent sum- 

mary from modern point of view. Quotations. 

125 



SECONDARY EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL 

(60) Kovalevsky, E. LTnstruction Publique en Russie. St. P. 1905. 

(61) Dovnar-Zapolski, M. V. Reform of Public Schools under Cather- 

ine II. Moscow, 1906. (Russ.) 

(62) Darlington, T. Education in Russia. London, 1909. Vol. No. 23 of 

Special Reports, English Board of Education. Good outline, 
with statistics, tables, etc. 

(63) Demkov, M. I. Western European and Russian Pedagogy. Mos- 

cow, 1911. (Russ.) 

(64) History of Russian Pedagogy. St. P.. 1899. 2nd ed. 

2 vols. (Russ.) 

(65) Krupskaya, N. Public Education and Democracy. St. P., 1917. 

(Russ.) 

(66) Kapterev, P. T. and Muzychenko, A. T. Contemporary Pedagogical 

Tendencies. Moscow, 1913. (Russ.) 

(67) Kniazkov, S. A. and Serbov, M. I. Outline of the History of Edu- 

cation in Russia to the Time of Alexander III. Moscow, 1910. 
(Russ.) 

(68) Chekhov, N. V. Public Education in Russia Since Alexander III. 

(Since 1860). Moscow, 1912. (Russ.) 

(69) Milioukov, P. Outlines of the History of Russian Culture. 3 vols. 

5th ed. St. Pt., 1904. (Russ.) Part II, pages 250-402 consti- 
tute an excellent outline of the history of education. 

(70) Charnolusky, V. The Problems of the Organization of Schools in 

Russia. St. Pt., 1909 (Russ.) 

(71) Tolstoy, D. A. Education in Russia in the XVIII Century. St. P., 

1885. Imperial Academy of Science. (Russ.) 

(72) The Gymnasium in the XVIII Century. Same author, etc. (Russ.) 

(74) The Universities in the XVIII Century. Same author, etc. (Russ.) 

All of these references, while not pure source material, are very rich 
in quotations and extracts of the original sources. 

■ MISCELLANEOUS 

(100) Kovalevsky, M. Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia. 
London, 1891. From origins to present. 

(101) Russian Political Institutions. Chicago, 1902. 

(102) Zilliacus, K. The Russian Revolutionary Movement. London, 1905. 

From Peter to present. 

(103) Milioukov, P. Russia and Its Crisis. Chicago, 1906. Social and 

political study. 

126 



^104) Wesselitsky, C de. Russia and Democracy. New York, 1916. 

;i05) Lenin, N. The Soviets at Work. Moscow and New York, 1918. 

^106) Kovalevsky. Le Regime E^onomique de la Russie. Paris, 1898. 

1^107) Antonelli, E. La Russie Bolsheviste. Paris, 1919. Rich in docu- 
ments. 

;i08) Reed. J. Ten Days that Shook the World. New York, 1919. A 
first hand account of the Bolshevik rising, with many documents. 

'109) Milioukov, P. Le Mouvement Intellectuel Russe. Paris, 1918. 

'110) Hecker, J. F. Russian Sociology. New York, 1915. 

'111) Spargo, J. Bolshevism. New York, 1919. 

T12) Ivanov-Razumnik. History of Social Thought in the XIX Century. 
2 vols. St. P., 1908. (Russ.) 

'113) Statesman's Year Book, 1918. (For statistics.) 

:il4) Russian Year Book, 1916. 

'115) Lenin and Trotsky. The Proletarian Revolution in Russia. New 
York, 1918. 

'116) Bolshevist Aims and Ideals. Reprinted from the Round Table. New 
York, 1919. 

^117) Kropotkin, P. Memoirs of a Revolutionist. New York, 1899. 



127 



VITA 

Daniel Bell Leary, born, New York City, June 16, 1886. 
Columbia College, B.A., 1909. 
Teachers' College, M.A., 1915. 

Graduate Student at Teachers' College, 1914-15, 1915-16, 1917-18, 
and Summer Sessions of 1915 and 1918. 

Phi Delta Kappa, Teachers' College, 1919. 

Head of Department of Education, Newcomb College, Tulane 
University, New Orleans, La., 1916-1918 and Summer Session 
1917. 

Professor of Psychology and Instructor in Russian, University of 
Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, 1919— 



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